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CANADIAN WILDS 



CANADIAN WILDS 



Tells About the Hudson's Bay Company, Northern 

Indians and Their Modes of Hunting, 

Trapping, Etc* 



BY 

MARTIN HUNTER 



PUBLISHED BY 

A. R. HARDING PUBLISHING CO, 

COLUMBUS, OHIO 



^% 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Comes Received 

MAR 15 W09 

, £opyricnt Entry _ 
CLASS O- XXc, No 

copy a. 



Copyright 1907 
By A. R. Harding Publishing Co. 



CONTENTS 



Chapter. Page. 

I. The Hudson's Bay Company 7 

II. The Free Trader 14 

III. Outfitting Indians 24 

IV. Trackers of the North 30 

V. Provisions for the Wilderness 38 

VI. Forts and Posts 46 

VII. About Indians 53 

VIII. Wholesome Foods ........•• 60 

IX. Officers' Allowance 70 

X. Inland Packs 77 

XI. Indian Mode of Hunting Beaver 83 

XII. Indian Mode of Hunting Lynx and Mar- 
ten 96 

XIII. Indian Mode of Hunting Foxes. . . .' 103 

XIV. Indian Mode of Hunting Otter and Mus- 

quash 109 

XV. Remarkable Success 117 

XVI. Things to Avoid 123 

XVII. Anticosti and Its Furs 132 

XVIII. Chiselling and Shooting Beaver 140 

XIX. The "Indian Devil" 150 

XX. A Tame Seal 158 

XXI. The Care of Blistered Feet 167 

XXII. Deer Sickness 172 

XXIII. A Case of Nerve 180 

XXIV. Amphibitious Combats 185 

XXV. Art of Pulling Hearts .,,.,. ,...,.-• 195 

(1) 



Contents. 



Chapter. Page. 

XXVI. Dark Furs 202 

XXVII. Indians Are Poor Shots 211 

XXVIII. A Bear in the Water 215 

XXIX. Voracious Pike 220 

XXX. The Brass-Eyed Duck 225 

- XXXI. Good Wages Trapping 232 

XXXII. A Pard Necessary 239 

XXXIII. An Heroic Adventure 243 

XXXIV. Wild Oxen 252 

XXXV. Long Lake Indians 256 

XXXVI. Den Bears 262 

XXXVII. The Mishaps of Ralson 270 



Li. 



L. 



MARTIN HUNTER. 



|3> 



INTRODUCTION. 



BY the courtesy of Forest and Stream and 
Hunter-Trader-Trapper these articles 
are republished in book form by the 
author. 

I have been induced to bring them out a sec- 
ond time under one cover by the frequent re- 
quests of my fellow bushmen who were kind 
enough to criticise 'them favorably when they 
first appeared in the magazine. 

In this preamble I think it proper and pos- 
sibly interesting to the reader to have a short 
synopsis of my career. 

I entered the service of the Hudson's Bay 
Company in 1863 as a clerk and retired in 1903 
a commissioned officer of twenty years' stand- 
ing. 

The modes of Trapping and Hunting were 
learned directly by personal participation in the 
chase with the Indians and the other stories 
heard first hand from the red man. 

My service in the employ of the Great Fur 
Company extended from Labrador in the East 

5 



6 CANADIAN WILDS. 

to Fort William on Lake Superior in the West 
and from the valley of the St. Lawrence in the 
South to the headwaters of its feeders in the 
North. 

By canoes and snowshoes I have traveled on 
the principal large rivers flowing south from 
the height of land, among them I may mention 
the Moisee, Bersimis, St. Maurice, Ottawa, 
Michipocoten, Pic and Nepigon. 

I have hunted, trapped and traded with the 
Montagnais, Algonquins and O jib ways, the 
three largest tribes that inhabit the country 
mentioned in the foregoing boundaries and 
therefore the reader can place implicit reliance 
in what is herein set forth. Giving a synopsis 
of the history of The Hudson's Bay Company, 
its Forts and Posts and the Indians they traded 
with as well as other incidents of the Canadian 
wilds. 

Kespectfully, 

Martin Hunter. 



CANADIAN WILDS. 

CHAPTEE I. 

THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 

The Hudson's Bay Company was incorpor- 
ated in the year 1670 and received its charter 
from Charles the Second, making it today the 
longest united company that ever existed in the 
world. 

In 1867 when the different provinces of old 
Canada were brought under the Dominion Con- 
federation, the Company ceded its exclusive 
rights, as per its charter, to the government of 
Canada, making this vast territory over which 
the Company had held sway for nearly two hun- 
dred years, free for hunters, trappers and 
traders. 

Prince Rupert, of England, was associated 
with the first body of "Adventurers Trading 
into Hudson's Bay/' for such were they desig- 
nated in the charter and the charter gave them 
the right to trade on all rivers and their tribu- 
taries flowing into Hudson's Bay. 

They established their first forts or factories 

7 



8 CANADIAN WILDS. 

at the mouths of the principal rivers that fall 
into the bay on the east, south and west shores, 
such as East Main, Rupert's, Moose, Albany, 
Churchill and a few intermediate small out- 
posts along the seashore. They endeavored to 
draw the interior Indians down to the coast to 
trade but after a few years they found that the 
long- journey to the factories took up so much 
of the Indian's time and left them, after their 
return to their hunting grounds, so exhausted 
from their strenuous exertions in negotiating 
the turbulent and swift flowing waters, that the 
company's management decided to stretch out 
and establish trading places up the different 
rivers. 

This small beginning of a post or two up 
each river was gradually continued ever further 
south, ever further west, as the requirements of 
the fur trade necessitated, there the company 
pushed in and followed their own flag, a blood 
red ground with H. B. C. in white block letters 
in the center. 

This flag is known from Labrador to the 
Pacific and from the St. Lawrence river to the 
Arctic regions. Several would-be wits have 
given these mysterious letters odd meanings. 
Among several I call to memory, "Here Before 
Christ," "Hungry Belly Company" and "Here 
Before Columbus." 



THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 9 

Two ships visited the Bay each summer 
bringing supplies for the next winter and tak- 
ing back to England the furs and oil collected 
during the past season. The coming of these 
ships, one to York Factory and the other to 
Moose Factory, was the event of the year as 
they brought the only mail the "Winterers" re- 
ceived from friends and relatives in far away 
Old England. 

Navigating the Bay was done pretty much 
by the rule of "Thumb." Notwithstanding its 
being one of the most dangerous bodies of water 
in America it is wonderful (now that the Bay is 
fairly well charted and shows up most of the 
dangerous reefs and shoals) how few accidents 
these old navigators had in taking their ships 
in and out of the Bay. 

Much depended on those same ships reaching 
their destination. Starvation would confront 
the officers and servants in the country and the 
want of the returns in England during those 
early days of the venture would have been a se- 
rious setback to their credit. While the ships 
were in the roadstead unloading and loading it 
was an anxious time to the captain and the offi- 
cer ashore for as the work had to be done by 
lighters (the ship lying three miles from the 
land) there was always the danger of a strong 
wind springing up. In such events the boats 



10 CANADIAN WILDS. 

scurried ashore while the ship slipped her cable 
and put to sea till fair weather. 

In parting with their charter to the Cana- 
dian Government the company reserved certain 
acreages about each and every one of their forts 
and posts besides two sections in each township 
from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Moun- 
tains and from the international boundary line 
to the northern edge of the Fertile Belt. These 
reserves of land sold to the incoming settlers as 
the country is filling up is a great source of 
revenue to the share holders and are becoming 
more and more valuable each succeeding year. 

Where most of the old prairie posts stood in 
the old days, the company now have "Sale 
Shops" for the whites and at these places they 
are successfully meeting competition, by the 
superiority and cheapness of the goods they 
supply. 

In old Canada the fur trade had always been 
the principal commerce of the country and after 
the French regime several Scotch merchants of 
Montreal prosecuted it with more vigor than 
heretofore. This they did under the name of 
"The Northwest Company." Their agents and 
"Couriers des Bois" were ever pushing west- 
ward and had posts strung from Ottawa to the 
Rocky Mountains and all the pelts from that 



THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 11 

immense country were brought yearly to the 
headquarters in Montreal. 

The Hudson- s Bay Company after having 
inhabited all the territory that they could right- 
ly claim under their charter, began to oppose 
the Northwest Company in the country they 
had in a way discovered. The Hudson's Bay 
Company after gettng out of the Bay found the 
Northwest Company's people trading on the 
Red, Assiniboine and Saskatchewan, all rivers 
that they could claim by right of their charter 
seeing they all drained into Hudson's Bay and 
then began one of the keenest and most bloody 
commercial warfares in history. 

Might was right and wherever furs were 
found the strongest party, for the time being, 
took them. [Retaliation was the unwritten law 
of the country and what was this week a Hud- 
son's Bay post was next week occupied by a 
party of Northwesters or vice versa. There is 
hardly a place in what is now the peaceful and 
law abiding Manitoba and the western provinces 
but what, if it could tell the tale, had witnessed 
at some time in its early history sanguinary 
conflicts between the two powerful and rival 
companies. 

Things got to such a pass that the heads of 
the two fur parties in London and Montreal saw 
that something had to be done to stay this loss 



12 CANADIAN WILDS. 

of lives and goods. Arrangements were there- 
fore made that the majority of the stockholders 
of both companies should meet in London. 
This convention had its first meeting on the 19th 
of May, 1821, and several other assemblies of 
the two factions took place before all the points 
at issue were mutually agreed upon. 

By wide mindedness and a liberal amount of 
give and take between the two contending par- 
ties a full understanding was agreed on. One of 
the points upon which a strong objection was 
made was the sinking of one of the identities, 
but this knotty point was eventually settled. A 
coalition of the two companies was formed un- 
der the title of "The Hudson's Bay Company," 
the first official year of the joined parties dating 
first of June, 1821, and the first governor, Mr. 
George Simpson, afterwards "Sir George." 

Mr. Simpson was knighted by Queen Vic- 
toria for having traveled from Montreal to Lon- 
don by land with the exception of crossing Beh- 
ring Strait and the- English Channel by boat. 

Sir George Simpson held the position of 
Governor of the fur trade of the Hudson's Bay 
Company for very many years and was followed 
by Governors Dallas, McTavish, Graham and 
Sir Donald A. Smith (now Lord Strathcona) 
after the latter's term of office the title of this 
position was altered to "The Commissioner." 



THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. 13 

The first gentleman to hold the management un- 
der this new title was Mr. Wriggley, who after 
serving two terms of four years each, retired 
and was succeeded by Mr. C. C. Chipman who 
is still in office and brings us down to the pres- 
ent day. 

There has always been a Governor and com- 
mittee in London where the real headquarters 
has ever been ? while the Commissioner's head 
place in Canada is situated in Winnipeg. 

The whole of the Great Company's collection 
of furs is shipped to England and sold by auc- 
tion three times a year, in January, March and 
October. Buyers from all over Europe attend 
these sales. 



OHAPTEK II. 



The origin of the term "Free Trader" dates 
back considerably over three-quarters of a cen- 
tury and was first used as a distinction by the 
Hudson's Bay Company between their own 
traders, who traded directly from their posts 
and others who in most cases had been formerly 
in their employ, but had turned "Free Traders." 
Men with a small outfit, who roamed amongst 
the Indians on their hunting grounds and bar- 
tered necessary articles that the hunters were 
generally short of. 

The outfit mostly consisted of tobacco, pow- 
der, ball, flints, possibly one or two nor' west 
guns, white, blue and red strands for the men's 
leggings, sky blue second cloth for the squaw's 
skirts, flannel of several bright colors, mole skin 
for trousers, a few H. B. cloth capots, fancy 
worsted sashes, beads, ribbons, knives, scissors, 
fire steels, etc. Some of the foregoing articles 
may not be considered necessary requirements, 
but to the Indian of those days they were so 
looked upon and a "Free Trader" coming to an 

14 , 



THE FREE TRADER. 15 

Indian's camp who had the furs, a trade, much 
to the trader's profit was generally done. 

In those away back days the Free Trader 
was always outfitted by the "Great Company." 
He endured all the labor, hardships and priva- 
tion of following the Indians to their far off 
hunting grounds and of a necessity charged 
high for his goods. Being a former servant of 
the company he got his outfit at a reduced price 
from what the Indians were charged at the 
posts. The barter tariffs at each of the posts 
was made out in two columns, i. e., Indian Tar- 
iff and Free Man's Tariff. Say, for example, a 
pound of English tobacco was bartered to the 
Indian at the posts for one dollar a pound, 
the Free Trader would get it in his outfit for 
75 cents, and when he bartered it to some hun- 
ter, probably hundreds of miles off, he would 
charge one and half to two dollars for the same 
pound of tobacco. 

I mention, to illustrate the amount in dol- 
lars and cents, but the currency of those days 
all over the northwest and interior was the 
"Made Beaver." As a round amount the M. B. 
was equivalent to 50 cents of our money of to- 
day. At all the posts on Hudson's Bay the com- 
pany had in coinage of their own, made of brass 
of four amounts ; an eight, quarter, half and 
whole Beaver. The goods were charged for at 



16 CANADIAN WILDS. 

* 

so many or parts of Made Beaver and the furs 
likewise valued at the same currency. 

Like most uneducated men who have to re- 
member dates, people and places, these Free 
Traders had wonderful memories. One who 
had been away on his venture for eight or ten 
months could on opening his packs, tho there 
might be- two or three hundred skins in his col- 
lection, if so requested, tell from what particu- 
lar Indian he received any skin picked out at 
haphazard. 

Observation and remembrance entered into 
every phase of their lives as it does into that of 
the pure Indian. Their very lives at times de- 
pended on their faculties and one might say all 
their bumps were bumps of locality and these 
highly developed all the way back from child- 
hood. 

Of their nationality they were mostly French 
Canadians or French half breeds, and as a rule 
went on their trading expeditions accompanied 
by their Indian wives and children. Time was 
of no object and as they traveled they trapped 
and hunted as they went. Their very living 
and subsistence depended on their guns and 
nets. Loaded as they were with goods to trade 
and their necessary belongings they could not 
take imported provisions. After their hard- 
ships of several months, after the breaking up 



THE FREE TRADER. 17 

of the lakes and rivers, they once more found 
themselves at the post from whence they re- 
ceived their outfit. 

From the factor down to the old pensioners, 
the people of the fort went down to welcome the 
new arrivals. Their advent was heralded by 
the firing of guns on rounding the point at 
which they first came in view of the post. On 
landing a general handshaking was gone thru 
by the two parties, the factor mentally estimat- 
ing the probable contents of the rich packs. 

The men, engaged servants, of the post, car- 
ried up to the house the peltries, while the Free 
Traders followed the factor to the trade shops 
where a plug of tobacco for the men and sugar 
for the women were given out by the clerks and 
with a generous tot of rum in which to cement 
their continued friendship, the Free Trader 
took his departure to put up his tepee and get 
his family and belongings under cover. 

Later on the servants brought him pork, 
lard, flour and tea enough for him and his fam- 
ily for supper and breakfast. No accounts were 
gone into on the day of arrival. The next morn- 
ing, however, the Trader repaired to the store 
with the factor and his clerk, the latter carrying 
his ledger and day blotter. The pads being un- 
laced the different kinds of skins were placed in 

2 



18 CANADIAN WILDS. 

separate piles and then classified according to 
value. The sum total being arrived at the 
amount of his outfit and supplies being de- 
ducted he was given a "bon" on the trade shops 
for his credit balance. 

Shortly after the Free Trader and his wife 
would be seen in the shop decking themselves 
out with finery, bright and gay colored clothes 
and fixings were the first consideration. After 
if there still remained a credit, luxuries in the 
eating way were indulged and that night a feast 
given by the Free Traders to the employes and 
hangers on at the post. 

Yes, they were a jolly, childlike race of men 
and as improvident as an Indian for the re- 
quirements of tomorrow. I have described the 
Free Trader of the past, and now I propose to 
describe the Free Trader of today, and as he 
has been for the last two decades. 

The building of the Canadian Pacific trans- 
continental road brought in its trail a class of 
very undesirable men. All rules have excep- 
tions. I must therefore be just and not con- 
demn all, but the majority of them were toughs 
and whiskey peddlers. They were the forerun- 
ners of the Free Traders of the present day, 
from Mattawa in the east to the shores of the 
Pacific on the west. They would start from 
some town back east with a keg of the strong 



THE FREE TRADER. 19 

alcohol, a few cheap gilt watches, some fancy- 
ribbons, colored shawls and imitation meer- 
schaum pipes, and if they found their bundles 
would bear a little more weight, they generally 
put in a little more "whiskey." They could al- 
most always "dead-head" their way up the line 
on a construction train. Any place where they 
saw a few camps of Indians or half-breeds they 
dropped off with their stock in trade. 

Such Indians as they found along the line 
were not hunters but they could act as guides 
to the Free Trader, and for a gaudy shawl or a 
few bottles of whiskey he could generally enlist 
one of them in his service. With an old canoe 
(furnished by the Indian) some flour, pork, tea 
and sugar, they could push their way up some 
river to a favorable point known by the Indian, 
and wait the canoes of trappers coming down 
on their way to one of the Hudson Bay posts at 
the mouth of the rivers. 

The route of the railway cutting the large 
navigable rivers at right angles, at some parts 
of the line, as much as a couple of hundred miles 
inland of our posts gave the Free Traders a 
great advantage as they could intercept the In- 
dians coming down from the height of land. 
Even to those Indians who had never tasted 
liquor the very word "fire-water" had a charm 
and an allurement not to be resisted. Probably 



20 CANADIAN WILDS. 

the whiskey trader could keep the Indians 
camped at the place they first met for two or 
three days. Once he had got them to take the 
second glass he could name his own price for 
the vile liquor and put his own valuation on 
their furs. 

I have heard of an Indian giving an otter 
skin for a bottle of whiskey. The skin was 
worth $15 and the whiskey possibly thirty cents. 
I knew positively of a trapper who gave a new 
overcoat worth $6 for a second glass of whiskey 
and when this took effect on his brain, for a 
third glass he gave a heavy Hudson Bay blanket 
that had cost him $8. The trader seeing he had 
nothing else worth depriving him of turned him 
out of doors on a bitter February morning. 

Since these men have overrun the country 
the Hudson Bay Company has spent hundreds 
of thousands of dollars trying to protect the In- 
dians against themselves. The laws of the 
Dominion ar^e stringent enough as they are set 
down in the blue book of the Indian Depart- 
ment, but they are very seldom enforced. The 
difficulty is to get sufficient evidence to secure 
judgment or committal of the offender. 

The Hudson Bay Company seeing the giving 
of liquor to Indians abased and impoverished 
him, abolished it by a law passed in committee 
in 1853. They saw that selling liquor to an In- 



THE FREE TRADER. 21 

dian put him so much short of necessary arti- 
cles to make a proper hunt, it weakened his 
; constitution, laid the seeds of disease, and from 
a business point of view, was bad policy. 

To make their posts perfectly free from 
liquor, the very yearly allowance to their offi- 
cers, clerks and servants was discontinued and 
each employe was given the equivalent as a cash 
bonus at the end of each year. I must say a 
white man or two amongst a drunken band of 
Indians ran considerable risk; several have 
paid for their greed of gain with their lives. 
Amongst the Indians many lives have been sac- 
rificed thru the liquor curse, shooting, stabbing 
and drowning being the principal results of 
their fatal debauches. 

It is a most pitiful sight for one to travel 
on the C. P. U. line and see at the stations along 
the interior the ragged bodies and emaciated 
features of the Indians who hang about the sta- 
tions. These are some of the good hunters of 
twenty-five years ago and their descendants. 
Back in those days an Indian's advances were 
only limited by his demands on the company. 
He took only what, under ordinary luck, he 
could pay for. 

To-day hardly one of them can get trust for 
a dollar. They pass their summer hanging 
about the stations, the women doing a little fish- 



22 CANADIAN WILDS. 

ing to keep body and soul together, and when 
the cold of winter drives them to the shelter of 
the forests, they have nothing necessary to 
prosecute a hunt even if they had the strength 
and energy to work. If one of their children 
or wives is lucky enough to trap an animal, the 
noble head of the family tramps oft to the near- 
est Free Trader and barters it for tobacco and 
whiskey. 

Coming back to the Free Traders I must 
mention the exception to the general run of 
them. In different parts of our territory or- 
ganized parties of twos or fours have tried to op- 
pose the company by trading in a straight way, 
that is, giving the Indian good, strong clothing 
and good provisions in exchange for his furs, 
but with very few exceptions the life of these 
small companies has been shortlived and I 
only know of one or two who made money by 
this trading. 

The rock upon which they invariably come 
to grief is giving credit to Indians. A plausible 
story in the spring as to why they cannot pay is 
generally accepted by the Free Trader and a sec- 
ond outfit given the next autumn with the idea 
of enabling them to pay at the close of another 
hunting season. The Trader being called upon 
to pay up his supplies in either Montreal, To- 
ronto or Winnipeg causes a sudden stoppage to 



THE FREE TRADER. 23 

their adventures and the field is open for some 
other party to go and have, most likely, the same 
disastrous ending. 

No, I say it with unbiased mind that the 
opening up of the country to outsiders was a 
sorry day for the Indians. While they were 
dealt with exclusively by the Hudson Bay Com- 
pany, they had the care and guidance of a par- 
ent, but the progress of settlement cannot be 
stayed and the end of the Indian is inevitable, 
and, like the buffalo, they will in a very few 
years be of the past. 

The Great Company, who for two and a quar- 
ter centuries has been identified with the fur 
trade, is rapidly becoming a company of shop- 
keepers in the new towns and villages of the 
west. With the disappearance of the Indian 
will go the last of the class of men who caused 
his undoing, "The Free Trader." 



CHAPTER III. 

OUTFITTING INDIANS. 

In these days of keen opposition it is only at 
the remote inland posts that we can supply the 
Indians with system; that is, as to amount of 
debt and a fixed time for sending them to the 
hunting grounds. 

Taking Long Lake Post, north of Lake Su- 
perior, as a sample to illustrate our manner in 
rigging out hunters, I will say we appoint the 
15th of September as the first day of supplies. 
On that day, early in the morning, the chief and 
his wife are called into the store, all others are 
excluded; this is done for two reasons — first, 
the Indian himself does not like the others to 
know what they take, or the amount of their 
debt; and, secondly, we find that when others, 
who are only onlookers are in the shop, they 
distract the attention of the Indian, who is tak- 
ing the outfit and delay us in our work. The 
first thing done after the door is closed and 
locked is to talk over the pros and cons with the 
Indian as to where he is going to hunt, and his 
prospects, and from this an amount agreed upon 
as to the extent of his new debt. 

24 



OUTFITTING INDIANS. 25 

This settled, we suggest that, first of all, 
necessary articles should be marked down ; these 
we mention one by one and he replies if he has 
such already, good enough for another year, or 
if we are to mark down the article. The first 
essention, of course, is ammunition; so many 
pounds "of shot and powder and so many boxes 
of percussion caps. Next on the list of his 
wants would be an axe, or axes, an ice chisel, 
steel traps, twine for a fish net, a few fish hooks, 
two or three mill-saw files (to sharpen his ice- 
chisel and axes) matches, a couple of bottles of 
pain-killer and the same of castor oil, and some 
thread and needles, (glovers and round). 

Then conies the imported provisions. To an 
ordinary family of a man, his wife and two or 
three children, he will take 200 pounds flour, 
50 pounds compound lard, 10 pounds tea, the 
same of tobacco, 2-pound cart of soda, 25 pounds 
sugar, another perhaps 12 or 15 pounds pork. 
This latter must be pure fat, meatless and bone- 
less. 

When we get this far in his supplies, a pause 
is called and he asks us to add up how much 
the foregoing comes to. Say this amounts to 
$100 and the amount agreed upon is $200, he 
thus understands he has $100 yet to get, or as 
much as whatever the balance may be. Then 
he begins over again by taking heavy Hudson's 



20 CANADIAN WILDS. 

Bay blankets; these Ave keep in all sizes from 
one to cover an infant up to what Ave call four 
point, this latter is large enough for a double 
bed and big enough for the man and woman to 
tuck themselves comfortably in. Of blankets 
he may take tAvo or three. 

The next on the list is heavy strouds, blue 
for the Avoman and Avhite for the man's leggings ; 
following this will be a warm cloth skirt for 
his wife and enough Estoffe du pays for his 
pants a pair of ready made mole skin pants for 
ice walking during the excessive cold of Janu- 
ary and February, seA^eral yards of English 
flannel, colors according to their taste; Ave keep 
in stock, white, crimson, yellow, sky blue, navy, 
and bright green; this is for underwear for the 
family, two pairs of heavy wool socks for the 
man and two pairs long avooI for his wife. A 
half dozen red, spotted handkerchiefs, these 
are put to several usages, such as tying up the 
hair, as a muffler about the neck, tying up their 
little belongings and many other usages apart 
from what a Avhite man would apply a hand- 
kerchief. 

Several yards also are taken of a strong cot- 
ton for dress use, or outside skirts; this is im- 
ported by us direct and goes under the name 
of "Stripped Yarmouth Druggets." It is very 
durable and stands the rough Avear and tear 



OUTFITTING INDIANS. 27 

of the bush. Should his proposed hunting 
grounds be remote from a deer country he 
would take dressed leather for mits and moc- 
casins, parchment deerskin for his snow shoes. 
Snow shoes, of course, each one of his family 
must have, and supplying himself with this 
leather, makes quite a hole in the amount of his 
debt. 

Here again another addition of figures is 
made; perhaps a few dollars yet remain to com- 
plete the agreed upon sum. He and his wife, 
on the floor of the shop, handle each article 
they have received, and think their hardest to 
remember some forgotten necessary article that 
may have escaped their memory. We also, 
from long use to the Indian's requirements, 
come to their assistance and sometimes suggest 
something quite overlooked, but very necessary. 

A further adding up is now made ; they have 
positively all they require for the winter 
months, and yet a few dollars remain to make 
up the amount, and then the Indian's weakness 
shows itself and he says: "Oh! well give sugar 
and lard for the remainder." Then he and his 
wife make all the purchases up into one or two 
blankets; an order on the provision store is 
given him and his account is made up and giv- 
en him in the following manner, 



28 CANADIAN WILDS. 

Pa-pa-mos, dr. to Hudson 1 * Bay Co. 
Long Lake Post. 

xxxxxxxxxx 
xxxxxxxxxx 

Sept. 15, 1895. 
$200.00 M. H. 

They don't generally understand figures, but 
they all understand that X stands for 10. As 
the Indian kills his furs, he adds them to his 
pack in salts often, at the same time scoring 
out one of the crosses on his debt slip. After 
all has been cancelled, he then hunts a few more 
skins to cover any misvaluation on his part, or 
to have something extra to barter for finery. 

After the chief leaves the shop another man 
and wife are called in according to their stand- 
ing in the band, and thus it goes on till we reach 
the last one. Six to eight families are about 
all we can get thru in a day, as there is so 
much time wasted in talk. 

If we begin on the Monday, we generally see 
the grand departure take place on the folloAV- 
ing Saturday. We only import the best of ev- 
erything and the Indian buying from our stores 
is assured of the purest provisions and the 
strongest and most durable goods. This is no 



"OUTFITTING INDIANS. 29 

boast for where we have no opposition the In- 
dians' and onr interests are identical, and the 
company's agent at such posts has the Indians' 
welfare at heart. 

On the frontier we are obliged by other buy- 
ers and circumstances over which we have no 
control to take common out of season skins. 
As the Indians find sale for skins of any kind, 
they hunt actually* ten months out of tne 
twelve. At our interior posts, where our word 
is law, we appoint the 25th of October to begin 
hunting and the 25th of May to finish; except 
for bears, and these they are allowed to hunt 
up to the 10th of June. What a sad sight it is 
for an officer coming from some interior district 
to a frontier post, where he left well-clothed 
contented Indians to find those swindled by the 
unprincipled traders, in rags, drunken and the 
seeds of consumption marked in their faces. 



CHAPTER IV. 

TRACKERS OF THE NORTH. 

What appears marvelous and positively un- 
canny to a town person is simple to a bushman. 

Years of continuous observation develops 
the bump of locality, every object has a place 
and meaning to a trapper ; his eye is ever on the 
alert, and what his eye sees is photographed on 
the brain and remains there for future refer- 
ence at any time he may require it. 

This bump of locality is highly developed in 
all Indians and whites who have passed many 
years in the bush. Without the faculty of re- 
membering objects a bushman could not find his 
way through the dense forests. 

Providing the trapper has once passed from 
one place to another, he is pretty sure to find 
his way through the second time, even if years 
should have elapsed between the trips. Every 
object from start to finish is an index finger 
pointing out the right path. A sloping path, a 
leaning tree, a moss-covered rock, a slight ele- 
vation in land, a cut in the hills, the water in a 
creek, an odd-looking stone, a blasted tree — - 

30 



TRACKERS OF THE NORTH. 31 

all help as guides as the observant trapper 
makes his way through a pathless forest. 

Of course, this tax on the memory is not 
required of trappers about a settled part of the 
country, but I am telling of what is absolutely 
necessary for the safety of one's life in the far- 
away wilds of the North, where to lose one's 
self might possibly mean death. 

I followed an Indian guide once over a trail 
of 280 miles, whereon we snowshoed over moun- 
tains, through dense bush, down rivers and over 
lakes. To test my powers of a retentive mem- 
ory, the following winter, when dispatches again 
had to be- taken to headquarters, I asked the 
Indian to allow me to act as guide, he following. 

On that long journey of ten or twelve days, 
always ^walking and continually thinking out 
the road, I was in doubt only once. We were 
standing on the ice ; a tongue of land stood 
out toward us ; a bay on either side. The port* 
age leaving the lake was at the bottom of one 
of these bays, but w T hich? The Indian had halted 
almost on the tails of my snowshoes, and en- 
joyed my hesitation, but said nothing. To be 
assured of no mistake, I had to pass over the 
whole of last winter's trip in my mind's eye up 
to the point on which we stood. Once the re- 
trospect caught up with us, there was no further 
trouble. Our route was down the left-hand bay. 



32 CANADIAN WJLDS. 

When the Indian saw me start in that direc- 
tion, he said : "A-a-ke-pu-ka-tan" ( "Yes, yes, yon 
are able"). 

The most difficult proposition to tackle is a 
black spruce swamp. The trees are mostly of a 
uniform size and height, the surface of the snow 
is perfectly level, and at times our route lies 
miles through such a country, and should there 
be a dull leaden sky or a gentle snow falling, 
there is nothing for the guide to depend on but 
his ability to walk straight. 

It has been written time and again that the 
tendency when there are no land marks is to 
walk in a circle. 

By constant practice, those who are brought 
up in the wilds acquire the ability to walk in a 
straight line. They begin by beating a trail 
from point to point on some long stretch of ice, 
and in the bush, where any tree or obstruction 
bars the way they make up for any deviation 
from the straight course by a give-and-take pro- 
cess, so that the general line of march is straight. 

During forty years in the country, I never 
knew an Indian or white bushman to carry a 
compass. Apart from a black spruce swamp, 
it would be no use whatever. 

In going from one place to another, the con- 
tour of the country has to be considered, and 
very frequently the "longest way round is the 



TRACKERS OF THE NORTH. 33 

shortest way home." A ridge of mountains 
might lay between the place of starting and the 
objective point, and by making a detour round 
the spur of same, one would easier reach his 
destination, rather than to climb up one side 
and down the other. 

On the first day after my arrival in London 
(the only time I ever crossed the water) a gen- 
tleman took me out to see some of the sights. 
He lived on the Surrey side, and took me direct, 
or, I should say crooked, into the city across the 
Thames. After walking me around several 
blocks and zigzagging considerably about, he 
came to a sudden stop at a corner. "Now," he 
said, "Hunter, suppose I was to disappear all 
at once, do you think you could find your way 
back to Elm Tree Lodge? I have always heard 
that you buslmien can find your way anywhere." 

Now, although there was no necessity for it, 
my years of schooling had caused me to observe 
every conspicuous object, and every turn we 
had made since leaving his residence ; and there- 
fore I replied, with the utmost confidence, 
"Why, to return to your house from here is as 
simple as falling off a log." 

Looking at me with the greatest incredulity, 
he said, "If you can find your way back unaided 
I will pay for the best hat in London." 

"Well, my dear sir, my number is 7, and I 

3* 



34 CANADIAN WILDS. 

want it soft felt and dark bottle green. Now 
follow me, and you can get the hat in the morn- 
ing.' 7 

Without going into details, suffice it to say, 
I conducted him to his own door, and a more 
perplexed man was not in London; so much 
so, he had to call in his wife, his mother-in-law 
and his next door neighbor to tell them of my 
achievement. 

At last I had to cut short his flow of words 
by saying my guiding him home was a most 
simple thing. It was merely the result of ob- 
serving as I went along, and running the objects 
backward as I came to the house. 

"If I was to tell you as a fact, my dear sir, 
that a bushman sees the track of some wild ani- 
mal in the snow, he can tell you not only the 
name of the animal, but if it was male or female, 
within an hour of the time the tracks were made, 
if it was calm or blowing and the direction of 
the wind at that time and many other minor 
things, you would think this wonderful. Yet, 
as wonderful as this may appear, and hardly to 
be credited, an Indian boy of ten or twelve can 
read this page from nature as easy as one of us 

can read a page of print." 

* * * 

When the cold nights of the latter end of 
October had set in and the leaves were crisp 



TRACKERS OF THE NORTH. 35 

underfoot, I decided to go and set up a line of 
marten traps through a stretch of green timber, 
between two large lakes. The distance was con- 
sidered about eight miles. 

I took an Indian youth as companion, for it 
is lonely work setting trap in the deep gloom 
of the forest alone. Our blankets, axes, two 
days' provisions, a square of cotton that we call 
a canopy, to keep off the wind, and' my rifle, 
made up our necessary equipment, with a few 
baits to start work upon. 

During the summer I had got an Indian to 
leave an old canoe on the shore of the big lake 
where we expected to come out ; this would save 
our coming back on our tracks, as we could re- 
turn by the canoe route, which was considerably 
longer, but much easier. 

We worked away all the day we left the post, 
and when cainping time came we found a pretty, 
sheltered place, the back of a large, flat-sided 
boulder. Ten feet in front of this lay a large 
fallen pine tree, against which we built our fire. 
Then we cut a lot of pitch pine dry wood in 
short lengths and split, ready to replenish the 
fire from time to time during the autumn night. 

It is cheerful when one wakes during the 
night to have a bright blaze in a few moments. 

The boy had worked pretty hard all day, and, 
after eating to repletion, rolled himself in his 



36 CANADIAN. WILDS. 

blanket and fell asleep. With me it was dif- 
ferent. I lay back half -reclining, half -sitting, 
enjoying the congenial heart; and wondering Avhat 
luck we would have from the traps when we 
made our first visit. My rifle lay alongside of 
me on the balsam brush, with the muzzle point- 
ing toward the fire, and, unconsciously my hand 
grasped the stock and my fore finger toyed with 
the trigger. I mention all these details to show 
how easy what followed came to pass. 

The sparks had all gone out of the wood and 
only a bright glow remained, enough, however, 
to light up the trunk of the pine log and a con- 
siderable distance each side of the fireplace. All 
at once I heard the crushing of dried leaves and 
the breaking of twigs, at some little distance off 
in the- forest. The sounds Avere evidently made 
by some large animal, and I soon realized it was 
coining slowly with steady steps toward the 
camp. 

My first thought was to chuck on some fresh 
fuel to scare whatever it was away; but the 
next moment I decided to keep quiet and await 
developments. 

With my thumb I drew back the hammer of 
the rifle and waited. I kept my eyes steadfast 
in the direction whence the sounds came, and in 
a minute (it appeared an hour to me) I saw the 
head and forequarters of an immense black 



TRACKERS OF THE NORTH. 6^ 

bear, which stood gazing down on the camp 
from behind the fallen tree. 

To raise my rifle and sight it point blank at 
Bruin's chest was the work of an instant. Crash 
went the bullet, true to the mark, and the bear 
fell backward, making the woods echo with its 
death roars. 

The boy sprang to his feet in a stupid, be- 
wildered war, asking what was the matter. I 
did not take time to answer him, being occupied 
in getting a fresh shell into the barrel, for one 
never knows when a bear is really dead. The 
safest way is to have your gun ready and stand 
off at a reasonble distance and wait until he 
kicks himself stiff. In this case, however, it 
was soon over with its bearship, for the bullet 
had gone right through the heart. 

The joy of the Indian boy knew no bounds 
when he saw the result of the shot, for he saw 
many gorges ahead of him. 

I had always been led to believe that smoke, 
or the blaze from a camp-fire, would keep away 
the denizens of the Candian forests, and when 
I told this bear adventure to old hunters they 
simply listened and gave a polite smile. 

In this instance it must have been a case of 
inordinate curiosity, accounted for in a manner 
from the fact of its being a female bear. 



CHAPTER V. 

PROVISIONS FOR THE WILDERNESS. 

All over the Hudson's Bay territory, in mak- 
ing trips, be it in winter or summer, there is a 
scale of provisions upon which a safe result can 
be assured. For each person of the party, per 
diem, the following is allowed, and that is mul- 
tiplied by the supposed number of days that the 
trip is likely to last. Moreover, for each seven 
days calculated on, an extra full day's ration 
is thrown in, this is for safety in case of some 
unlooked for accident. 

Provisions per man, per day: 2 pounds of 
flour (or 1^ pounds of sea biscuits), 1 pound 
of fat mess pork, 2 ounces of sugar, | ounce of 
tea, 2 ounces of peas (or same of barley), -J 
ounce of carbonate of soda, and ^ ounce of salt. 

The peas or barley are intended to be cooked 
during the night's encampment with any game 
the route may have produced through the day. 
With such rations I have traveled with large 
and small parties, sometimes with Indians only, 
and at others with Indian and Canadian voyag- 
ers mixed; have penetrated the Avildest parts of 
I 38 



PROVISIONS FOR THE WILDERNESS. 39 

two provinces, in canoes and on snowskoes, and 
was never short a meal. I admit that with the 
wasteful and improvident character of the In- 
dians, the leader of the' party must use due care 
and watchfulness over his outfit and see it is 
not wrongly used. 

Take, for instance, the provisions for a party 
of seven men for fifteen days, the weight ag- 
gregates 347 pounds, and is of formidable bulk; 
and when the necessary camping paraphernalia, 
tents, blankets, kettles and frying pans, are piled 
on the beach alongside the eatables, the sight 
is something appalling, and the crew is apt to 
think what an unnecessary quantity of provis- 
ions; but before the journey is oyer we hear 
nothing about there being too much grub.. Long 
hours, hard work and the keen, bracing atmos- 
phere gives the men appetites that fairly as- 
tonish even themselves. 

If a party is to return on the outgoing trail, 
and after being off a few days finds it is using 
within the scale of provisions, it is very easy to 
cache a portion for the home journey with a 
certainty of finding it "after many days," that 
is, if properly secured. If in the depth of win- 
ter, and there is a likelihood of wolves or wol- 
verines coming that way, a good and safe way 
is to cut a hole in the ice some distance from 
the shore on some big lake, cutting almost 



40 CANADIAN WILDS. 

through to the water. In this trench put what 
is required to be left behind, filling up with the 
chopped ice, tramp this well down, then pour 
several kettles of water on top. This freezes at 
once, making it as difficult to gnaw or scratch 
into as would be the side of an ironclad. I 
have come on such a cache after an absence of 
three weeks to find the droppings of wolves and 
foxes about, but the contents untouched. One 
could not help smiMng on seeing these signs, 
imagining the profound thinking the animals 
must have exerted in trying to figure out a plan 
to reach the toothsome stuff under that hard, 
glazed surface. 

At other seasons of the year a good cache 
is made by cutting and peeling a long live tam- 
arac pole. Place this balanced over a strong 
crutch, tie what is to be left secure to the small 
end, over which place a birch bark covering to 
keep off the rain (or failing the* proper place 
or season for getting bark, a very good protec- 
tion is made with a thatch of balsam boughs 
placed symmetrically as shingles) and tying all 
in place, tip up the small end, weighting down 
the butt with heavy logs or stones; and possess 
your mind in peace. 

Two of the best auxiliaries to a short supply 
of provisions that a party can take on any trip 
in the wilds of Ontario or Quebec, are gill-net 



PROVISIONS FOR THE WILDERNESS. 41 

and snaring wire. As food producers, I place 
these before a gun. Most of the interior lakes 
contain fish of some sort, and a successful haul 
one night can be smoke dried to last several 
days without spoiling, even in hot weather. So 
long as they are done up in a secure manner in 
birch bark to keep out blue flies, the greatest 
danger of their going bad is prevented. 

Another very good way to preserve and util- 
ize fish, is to scorch a small portion of flour 
(about one-third the quantity) and mix with 
pounded up, smoke dried fish, previously 
cleaned of bones. This makes a light and sus- 
taining pemmican, easily warmed up in a fry- 
ing-pan, and if a little fat can be added in the 
warming process, one can work on it as well as 
on a meat diet. 

Admitting that there are years of plenty 
and years of scarcity with rabbits, there must 
be a dearth indeed when one or two cannot be 
snared in some creek bottom near the night's 
camp. A gun on the other hand may be only 
an incumbrance on a long journey. A chance 
shot may well repay the person carrying it, but 
very frequently a gun is quite useless. 

We crossed the country some years ago be- 
tween St. Maurice and Lake St John. It was 
at the very best time of the year to see game, 
being in the month of May, when every living 



42 CANADIAN WILDS. 

thing is full of life and moving about. The trip 
took us seven clays going; coming back by an- 
other route we gained one day. On the whole 
of that journey through bush, lakes and rivers 
we only fired two cartridges, whereas our small 
gill-net gave us splendid fish each camping 
place. 

Another trip I remember, this time in the 
winter, accompanying the men who carried the 
winter despatches between Pic River and Mich- 
ipecoten, a distance of 120 miles each way. I 
was prevailed upon to take a rifle, as the route 
went over a very high mountain where deer 
(caribou) were seen every year by the men. 
Well, I suppose they told the truth; but I car- 
ried that gun 240 miles -without firing a shot. 
No, as a possible help to stave off starvation, 
commend me to a net and snare in preference 
to a gun. 

In my younger days in the Hudson's Bay 
Company's service I put in many years in what 
we call the Moose Belt in Quebec — that is, 
from the St. Maurice River on the east to Lake 
Nipissing on the west from the Kepewa on the 
south to near the height of land on the north. 
All inside these boundaries was teeming with 
moose. They were killed in the most wanton 
manner by Algonquin Indians and the lumber- 



PROVISIONS FOR THE WILDERNESS. 43 

men, in many instances only the hide being 
taken, and the meat left. Our own Indians, 
who lived year in and year out in the country, 
never wasted a particle of meat. If they killed 
more than the family could consume during the 
winter months, before the warm days of April 
set in, it was carefully collected, cut in strips 
and smoke dried for summer use. While at- 
tending to the curing of the meat, the thrifty 
squaw dressed the hides. These were cut up 
and made into moccasins and traded at our 
store during their stay about the post in sum- 
mer. An ordinary sized hide would cut up into 
about twenty-two pairs of shoes (without tops) 
and commanded $1.50 per pair, we selling them 
for the same price in cash to lumber concerns, 
making our profit on the goods bartered. 

The young Indian the year prior to getting 
married always exerted himself to show how 
many moose he could kill. This was their 
boast and pride to show they were good pro- 
viders of food. The Indian nature to kill would 
manifest itself at this time, and the numbers 
killed by some of the young slips is hardly to 
be credited. Older men with families never 
killed for the sake of killing. 

I knew a young Indian personally whose 
mother had been left a widow with a large fam- 



44 CANADIAN WILDS. 

ily. He was the eldest of the children, and that 
summer began to strut about the post in fine 
clothes and mix with the men of the tribe. This 
is one of the traits that shows itself before mat- 
rimony is contemplated. The killing of many 
moose was sure to follow these signs. That 
young boy actually killed to his own gun ninety 
moose. Averaging the butchered meat of each 
moose at the low estimate of 600 pounds, we 
have a gross weight of 54,000 pounds of good, 
wholesome food. 

This section of country was in those days, I 
venture to say, the richest in game on the con- 
tinent of America. Every little creek or lake 
had its beaver lodge, and even on the main 
routes of travel one would see beaver swimming 
two or three times in the course of a day's 
paddle. 

At the posts we lived on fish, game and pota- 
toes: Our allowance of flour was only 100 
pounds for each man for the twelve months, 
and we used to spin this out by eating only a 
pancake or so on Sundays and a pudding on 
Christmas. 

The choice bits of the moose — the tongue 
and muzzle — the Indians brought us in quan- 
tities, the trade price of each being half a "made 
beaver," equal to a supposed sum of fifty cents. 



PROVISIONS FOR THE WILDERNESS. 45 

This was paid in goods, and would be further 
reduced by 100 per cent, our advance for trans- 
port and profit. 

One cannot but look back with regret to 
those days and think such slaughter was mur- 
der. 



CHAPTER VI. 

FORTS AND POSTS. 

The Hudson's Bay Company's establishments 
comprised two Factories, several Forts and nu- 
merous posts, out-posts and smaller ones called 
"flying posts." I am writing of the days gone 
by for now, since the country is opened up, 
forts, as they were then known, no longer exist. 
The so-called factories were not places in which 
fabrics or other goods were manufactured, but 
more rightly speaking great depots where an 
entire year's supplies were stored in advance in 
case of a mishap to either of the ships. 

The country was subdivided into the North- 
ern Department and Southern Department. 
York Factory supplying the requirements of 
the former and Moose Factory the latter. At 
these places the summer months was their busy 
season, for not only did they receive the next 
year's outfit from the ships, but numerous bri- 
gades of boats and canoes were continually load* 
ing and departing for the far away inland posts 
and forts. 

With the exception of one or two which were 

46 



FORTS AND POSTS. 47 

built of stone, the forts and posts were con- 
structed of heavy hewn logs which, being placed 
flat to flat, were bolted with strong treenails 
every second or third tier until the desired 
height of wall was attained. The windows were 
mere narrow slits in the walls and as few as 
possible on the ground floor. 

All the buildings were made in the same 
strong way and consisted, in an ordinary fort,~ 
of the master's house (or chief officer's dwell- 
ing) ; this was the most pretentious building 
in the lot, for not only' did the factor and his 
family occupy it but it also lodged the clerks 
and other petty officials, besides furnishing a 
spacious mess or dining room and a guard room 
in which the officers lounged and smoked and 
the small arms were stacked ready for use. 

Within the enclosure were the following 
other buildings, similar in construction to the 
great house. A store house in which was kept 
the bulk of the outfit and the furs gathered. A 
trade shop in which the Indians bartered their 
peltries. A men's house or servants' quarters. 
A work shop in which all necessary repairs were 
made on guns, harness, etc., and a stable to 
house the stock at night. They pastured, undei 
guard, outside the walls during the day. 

These buildings were generally in the form 
of a hollow square and the whole surrounded 



48 CANADIAN WILDS. 

by a picket stockade ten or twelve feet high. 
This protection was made from trees of about 
seven inches in diameter, brought to a sharp 
point at the upper end and planted deep in the 
ground, touching one another. Here and there, 
inside, the stockade was reinforced by strong 
braces, which added to its solidity, should a 
combined force of men be brought against it. 

At each of the four corners of the square 
a strong block tower was erected with em- 
brasures cut therein for shooting from. In some 
of the larger forts small cannon Avere placed 
that commanded each 'side of the square and 
all around the inside of the pickets ran a raised 
platform on which men standing would be 
breast high to the top of the protection. This 
gave them a great advantage in shooting on 
coming enemies or repelling scalers. 

Such places Avere only in the prairie country 
where the warlike and turbulent Black Feet, 
Bloods, Pegans and Sioux roamed. Amongst 
the bush or fish-eating tribes less severe precau- 
tion was required, altho the most of them were 
enclosed by the picket stockade and supplied 
liberally Avith muskets, cutlasses and side arms. 

While the Indians were paying their semi- 
annual trading visits the dwellers of the forts 
were confined pretty well indoors and the stock 
hobbled close to the stockades, for it was not 



FORTS AND POSTS. 49 

always safe for a small party to be caught far 
afield. Great massive, barred gates opened into 
the fort, in the leaves of one side a wicket placed 
for the entrance and departure of men afoot, 
and it was thru this wicket an Indian and his 
wife were admitted with their furs to trade. 
When they were finished bartering and de- 
parted, two others were allowed in and so it 
went on. 

The trade shop was so constructed that the 
Indian and his wife did their barter at the end 
of a long narrow passage, at the end of which a 
square hole was cut in the logs, behind which 
the trader stood with an assistant to fetch the 
goods required by the purchaser. The display 
of goods on the shelves was invisible to the In- 
dian, but it was not necessary he should see 
them inasmuch as there being no great variety, 
everything being staple and the same from year 
to year, manufactured of the best material ex- 
pressly for the Company. 

The trade shop was always built near the 
gate and the guard at the wicket, after ad- 
mitting the would-be purchaser of supplies, 
locked and barred the gate and conducted them 
to the entrance of the passageway along which 
all they had to do was to travel until they 
reached the trader at the end. 



50 CANADIAN WILDS. 

So that the Indian might know the amount 
of his means of trade the furs were taken in 
first and valued at a certain well-known curren- 
cy of that particular part of the country in 
which he resided, i. e., "Made Beaver" or so 
many "Martens." In some places he was given 
the gross amount in certain quills and about 
the Bay in brass tokens. Of this latter coinage 
the Company had quarters, halves and whole 
M. B. (Made Beaver). Once this was mutu- 
ally adjusted, trade commenced. The Indian 
would call for a gun and pay so many Made 
Beaver, a scalp knife, powder, shot and so on, 
paying for each article as he received it in either 
quills or tokens. 

The outposts or "flying posts" were more in 
the bush country, where the Indians, as a rule, 
lived peaceably with one another and the whites. 
The smaller of these trading places were only 
kept open during the winter months and were 
generally built for the accommodation of the 
Indians and supplied with absolute necessities 
only. This enabled the hunter to keep closer to 
his work and not travel long distances, when 
furs were prime, for some positive requirement, 
such as the replacing of a broken gun. The 
keepers of these small posts were in most cases 
guides or deserving and trustworthy servants 
of long standing in the employ. With their 



FORTS AND POSTS. 51 

families and a man or two they departed from 
the forts in September, taking the supply of 
trading stuff with them. 

These small parties were self-sustaining, be- 
ing given one day's provisions to take them 
away from the fort. ' After that until the next 
May they lived on fish and the small game of 
the country, with probably an odd wood caribou. 
The men of the party trapped furs while hunt- 
ing game for their substenance. The proceeds 
for the personal winter trapping of each serv- 
ant was allowed him as a bonus over and above 
his wages. Cash was not given, but they had 
permission to ' barter the skins for what they 
chose out of the trade shop and they went 
principally in tobacco for the men and finery 
for the women. 

Where fish and rabbits in their season was 
the mainstay with these people, prodigious num- 
bers were required and consumed to sustain 
life. Thirty or forty white fish or the same of 
rabbits was an ordinary daily consumption of 
the dwellers at one of these "flying posts," but 
the reader must remember they had no auxil- 
iaries to help out this plain straight food. 

No butter, lard, pork, sugar or vegetables, 
just rabbit or white fish twice a day and noth- 
ing else. This was washed, down with bouillon 
in which the food was cooked. Spring and fall 



52 CANADIAN WILDS. 

they had a variety in ducks, geese, beaver and 
an occasional bear and then they lived in the 
tallest kind of clover while it lasted. 

As no insurance company could be found 
who would take fire risks that could only be 
represented to them on paper by the interested 
parties, the Hudson's Bay Company began 
years ago to take certain sums of money out 
of each year's profits and created a marine and 
fire account, out of which fund any loss by sea 
or fire is met and the district or department 
where the accident occurred is recouped for its 
loss. Fires at the forts and posts have been 
of very rare occurrence, as the utmost care and 
precaution has ever been exercised in prevent- 
ing such by the officer in charge. 

Self-preservation is the first law of nature 
and the dwellers of these far away Hudson's 
Bay posts knew of no greater calamity than 
that of being burnt out and they looked to it 
that as far as precaution went this should not 
occur. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ABOUT INDIANS. 

The way in which the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany managed the Indians of Canada has ever 
been admired by the people of the outside world. 
Their fundamental rule and strict order to their 
servants was never to break faith with an In- 
dian. As time went on the Indians began to 
realize fully that the company was in the coun- 
try for their mutual benefit, not as aggressors. 
land grabbers or people to take away their 
vested rights. 

It soon became known that any promise 
made to them by a Hudson's Bay officer was as 
good as fulfilled. On the other hand, when 
"No" was said it meant No every time and there 
was never any vascillating policy. "Just and 
Firm" was the motto in all the Company's deal- 
ings with the natives and while they were at all 
times prepared, as far as they could be, to meet 
any trouble, yet they never provoked enmity. 
To do so would have been antagonistic to their 
interests even if justice and humanity were put 
aside. 

53 



54 CANADIAN WILDS. 

Each officer of the posts had the welfare of 
the Indians as much at heart as a father has 
for his own children. In sickness they attended 
them, in trading they advised them what goods 
would be most beneficial and lasting to their 
requirements and as far as they could in a pa- 
cific way they advised them when trouble arose 
between any members of the tribe. 

In those days when the Company had the 
country under their exclusive sway, no cheap, 
shoddy goods were imported in the trading 
forts Durability was looked for, not flashy fin- 
ery. These came with the opening of the coun- 
try and the advent of peddlers and unprinci- 
palled traders. We see the results of this today 
at any of the stations where our transconti- 
nental train stops. Bands of the once well-con- 
ditioned, well-clothed, sober Indians are now re- 
placed by ragged, emaciated, vice marked de- 
scendants of these, hanging around in idleness, 
an object lesson of what so-called civilization 
has brought them to. Except in some far back 
isolated posts, the Indian's word goes for noth- 
ing. They have lost the once binding obligation 
that their promise carried and the trader can 
no longer depend on them. 

As the writer knew the pagan and uncivi- 
lized Indian some forty years ago he was truth- 
ful, sober, honest and moral. I won't say the 



ABOUT INDIANS. 55 

white man has wilfully made him otherwise than 
what he was, but as a fact he is. It has been a 
transformation in which the Indian has fallen 
to most of the white man's vices and adopted 
very few of his virtues. My experience has been 
over considerable of the country and amongst 
several tribes and my observation has told me 
that about the Mission centers (be the denomi- 
nation what it may) is to be found the greatest 
debauchery and rascality in the Indian and that 
right at their very gates. 

Prior to 1821 both the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany and that of the Northwest gave liquor to 
the Indians, but after the coalition of the two 
companies a wise policy was inaugurated and 
liquor was stopped thruout the vast country. 
The Company's people saw that liquor to the 
Indian was laying the seeds of illness and death 
and impoverishing his family, but the Company 
did not take away the grog (which had been 
given in most cases as a bonus on their hunt) 
without giving an equivalent in value and the 
cash value of liquor to each hunter entitled to 
any was given in the shape of any goods he chose 
from the trade shop. Even the servants who 
had heretofore received a Saturday night al- 
lowance of spirits, received in lieu thereof two 
pounds sterling per annum added to their 
wages. 



56 CANADIAN WILDS. 

The Indian in the olden days seldom stayed 
about the posts longer than to barter his furs 
and got back to his hunting grounds with as 
little delay as possible. They were fish and 
flesh eaters, almost every river and lake 
abounded with the former and the surrounding 
woods furnished the latter and the Indian got 
his living from day to day with very little ex- 
ertion. The Indian has no idea of hording up 
the treasures of this world and in only two in- 
stances did I know one to have a bank account. 
They have an implicit and abiding faith in kind 
providence to supply their wants as they go 
thru life and reason that what is sufficient for 
them will be forthcoming for their sons and 
daughters. 

As an agriculturist the Indian is a failure. 
The life is too hard and humdrum for one whose 
ancestors from away back have lived a nomad 
life. His sphere of action on a farm is too cir- 
cumspect and he pines and longs for the free- 
dom of the wilds. It is a sad and not a success- 
ful measure, this corralling of the once lords 
of the country on restricted reservations which 
in plain English is no better than a prison to 
them. 

The Indian in his native state is hospitable 
to a degree. The stranger who comes to his 
wigwam is given the best and choicest pieces 



ABOUT INDIANS. 57 

of what his larder contains. The softest and 
best bed is made for him furtherest from the 
door. When he arrives no impertinent ques- 
tions are asked as to his business^ destination 
or his success in the hunt. Any such informa- 
tion that he thinks fit to impart is given volun- 
tarily over a pipe of peace before rolling up in 
his robe or blanket. 

It is not considered good form to ask ques- 
tions, even a member of the family coming home 
at night is not asked as to what success he has 
had in the chase. His bundle or game bag is 
thrown inside the door and remains there until 
his mother has placed food before him. While 
partaking of this his mother (or wife if it hap- 
pens to be the father) opens his bag and takes 
out, piece by piece, the contents. If he has 
killed a deer the head and heart only are 
brought to camp. If a bear, the four paws, if a 
moose, the tongue and muzzle. 

The Indians are very superstitious as to 
how they treat the flesh and bones of the large 
game they kill. Beaver bones are never thrown 
to the dogs, but are carefully collected and 
sunk in the lake or river, thus returning them 
to the element from which they came. A bear 
killed by an Indian is always addressed as cou- 
sin and a harangue is given him by the hunter 
and his pardon asked for the necessity of tak- 



58 CANADIAN WILDS. 

ing his life. The bones, especially the skull, are 
hung up at the exact spot where he fell, jour- 
neys from camp often being taken with the ex- 
press purpose of carrying out this sacred duty. 

Deer and moose antlers and shoulder blades 
are generally found on stakes or dry knots of 
trees at the discharge of some big lake on main 
canoe route. There are certain parts of the flesh 
and insides of these animlas that the women 
are never allowed to partake of, such as the 
head, heart and paws of the bear. 

Likewise it is infra dig. for a man to carry 
water to the camp, chop wood or dry his own 
moccasins. After the killing of big game it 
rests with the women and children to cut up 
the meat and toboggan it to camp. The man 
merely walking ahead to show the way and loll- 
ing about an open fire while the work of butch- 
ering and loading sled is going on. 

Physique and Health. — Before the Indian 
came in close contact with the whites he lived 
on the produce of the country and remained 
close to nature. He was of a wirey and healthy 
stature and lived to a ripe old age. Now from 
their acquired taste of the white man's foods, 
love of liquor, insufficient clothing and early 
marriages, the "white plague" has taken firm 
hold in every band and a few decades will see 



ABOUT INDIANS. 59 

very few of the Government wards to be cared 
for. 

How few of the thousands of immigrants 
now flowing into the country pause to consider 
that once these beautiful lakes, rivers, prairies 
and mountains were the resort and homes of a 
race of God's primitive children. Their wanta 
were supplied with a lavish generosity by a 
Great Spirit and pagans tho they were said to 
be they cast their eyes heavenwards and thanked 
that Great Spirit for blessings received. And 
the translation after death that they looked for 
ward to, to the Happy Hunting Grounds, what 
are these but our God and our Heaven? 

Poor, fast disappearing race! I have lived 
with them, hunted with them and walked the 
long trail and from my city home I often yearn 
for the old life in that North Country. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

WHOLESOME FOODS. 

Men are governed, or prejudiced very much 
for, or against, things by appearances or names. 
And this I find holds even with practical men 
as are hunters, traders and trappers, men who 
as a rule reason much, and are endowed with 
considerable common sense. 

There are many food meats that the woods 
furnish that are tabooed from the hunter's bill 
of fare simply by the name of the animal that 
furnishes it. The skin is taken but the flesh 
is cast away, and this for no other reason but 
the name the beast is generally known under. 

Take, for instance, the water rat, musquash, 
or the more generally used name of musk rat. 
Here we have certainly nothing against it but 
the name. Because did we of the fraternity of 
hunters pause to consider, and reason, we must 
see that a musquash ought not, and cannot be 
different from a beaver. They are identically 
the same in every detail except the formation of 
the tail. They live on the same food, roots, 
grasses, and twigs, as the beaver does and to the 

60 



WHOLESOME FOODS. 61 

eye they are (barring the tail) a small beaver 
in miniature. 

Musquash, like all animals in cold countries, 
are at their best condition in the autumn. Let 
my hunter friend take one of the above despised 
animals, select a nice mixed flesh and fat one, 
clean it as you would a beaver, split it up the 
front, impale it on a sharp pointed stick, intro- 
duce the point near the root of the tail, and 
bring it up to the inside of the head. Plant 
your screwer in front of your camp fire, giving 
it an occasional twist, while getting your tea 
and other things ready. When done stand it 
back from the excessive heat for a short while 
to cool and harden. Fill your pannican of tea, 
spread out your biscuits, cut off a quarter sec- 
tion of your roast suckling, and fall to, and a 
hundred to one you never ate anything more 
delicious. I knoAV prejudice has to be gotten 
over, "I have been there myself." 

I starved once for a day and a night, did 
hard paddling and portaging all day and went 
supperless at night, simply because I could not 
get over the idea of "rat." We had about a 
dozen with us, and my Indian companion 
roasted a couple each meal and demolished both 
himself with satisfaction and relish; for myself 
the thought of the name was enough. 

Take again the Canadian lynx. Were this 



62 CANADIAN WILDS. 

name always adhered to, there would be less 
room for prejudice, but unfortunately it is more 
frequently called cat. I admit it has all the ap- 
pearances and manners of the cat, but let some- 
one, unknown to you, fry some fat cutlets from 
the ham of a lynx, and fifty to one you will rel- 
ish it as very fine veal and you cannot be con- 
vinced to the contrary. There again is the por- 
cupine, I think sometimes known as the hedge- 
hog. When they are in good condition, nicer 
or more juicy meat a hunter cannot put his teeth 
into. When properly prepared and properly 
cooked, the white mans "rarebit/' the suckling 
pig, cannot prove its points. 

The arctic or snow owl is a bird that gives 
as fine a flavored flesh, and the same in color 
and appearance as a fat capon. But where one 
is set against it, is when served up in Indian 
fashion, boiled whole, it has then the appear- 
ance of a young baby, and one would almost 
have to be a professional cannibal to tackle the 
object. The thick, plump thighs, the round 
bald head, makes the appearance to a young in- 
fant almost startling. However, if one closes 
his mental eyes to this similitude, the flesh is 
most toothsome. 

I come now to another that occurs to me as 
being much despised, that is the festive and 
highly perfumed skunk. We look on a skunk, 



WHOLESOME FOODS. 63 

be it man or beast, as the meanest kind of thing, 
but I assure you the skunk (the four footed 
one) is not to be despised or cast aside when 
one is hungry or desires a change from the ever- 
lasting bacon and biscuit. A skunk, shot and 
prepared with care, makes very good eating. 

Two of the animals of our forest I never 
could stomach and very few Indians eat them, 
be they ever so much pushed for food, and these 
are : the otter and mink. Their flesh is oily, 
black and highly flavored, resembling the meat 
of seal, only more so! The Indians as a rule 
look down with contempt on a fellow Indian 
who eats otter or mink, whether from necessity 
or from an acquired and perverse taste. 

I venture to opine my little sketch will set 
many of my hunter friends thinking and per- 
haps make a few converts. You won't repent it. 



Forty years ago, before the country was 
opened up to civilization and the usual provis- 
ions of the white man were imported into the 
wilds, the great staple foods of the territories, 
from the Labrador Atlantic seaboard to the Pa- 
cific, consisted of buffalo, caribou, white fish 
and rabbits. According to the parts of the 
country where these animals resorted, the In- 
dians, traders and trappers, lived almost exclu- 



64 CANADIAN WILDS. 

sively on their flesh, either in the fresh, dried 
or pemican state. 

All foods, not imported, Avent' under the 
name of country produce, and as flour is the 
staff of life to the white man,- so was buffalo, 
caribou, rabbit or white fish to the dwellers of 
the north country. Beaver, partridge, porcu- 
pine and other small prey, a kind of entree, or 
side dish, got only at odd times, and not to be 
depended on for regular three times a day diet. 

The quantity of any one of these four foods 
required to sustain, even a family of six, dur- 
ing a long northern winter, was something to 
make a layman incredulous. 

The Indians living about the plains of the 
lower Saskatchewan and foothills of the Kock- 
ies not only lived on the buffalo, but made up 
immense quantities of pemican, which was 
parched in summer skin bags, weighing about 
sixty pounds each, and traded for ammunition, 
cloth, beads, hatchets, etc., at the forts. 

From these bases of supply the bags of meat 
were sent to posts farther north, and used for 
tripping and feeding the men about the post. 
Large quantities were floated down each spring 
from Fort Ellis, Qu Appelli and other plain 
forts, by the Assiniboine to Fort Garry and from 
there in larger boats to Norway House, on Lake 
Winnipeg, which in those days was the receiv- 



WHOLESOME FOODS. 65 

ing and distributing factory for all the country 
north and east, and had the distinction of being 
the place of council each year. 

The people inhabiting the country embraced 
by the Mackenzie River, Great Bear Lake, and 
the coast of Lake Winnipeg, subsisted almost 
entirely on white fish. These were killed in 
great numbers each spawning season, not only 
for their own food, but for their team dogs as 
well, the posts putting past from ten to one hun- 
dred thousand, according to the importance of 
the place and the mouths to feed. 

The fish were hung in number on skewers as 
taken from the water, the sharpened stake be- 
ing run through the fish near the tail. 

The string of ten fish on a skewer was called 
a "percer," and was hung head clown from long 
horizontal poles, as high as a man could reach, 
and the length of these traverses would accom- 
modate one hundred "percers." The great 
stock of fish was surrounded by a high picket 
stockade open to- the weather, with one entrance, 
which was kept strictly under lock and key, and 
opened each evening by the • post-master, i. e., 
steward, who gave out the requirements for the 
next twenty- four hours' consumption. 

The expenditure was kept posted up each 
night, showing for what use the fish had been 
given out, under the following headings: 

5 



66 CANADIAN WILDS. 

Mess Account. 

Men's Rations. 

Indians visiting the post. 

Dog Rations. 

Thus, at any time, the factor could tell the 
exact number of fish consumed and number yet 
on hand. 

Many of the posts would have an expendi- 
ture of a thousand fish a week for all purposes, 
which would be about thirty thousand for the 
winter. 

In the country lying south of Lake Winnipeg 
to Lake of the Woods and east as far as the Ot- 
tawa River, the staple, food was the harmless 
little rabbit. It is a dispensation of Providence 
that the rabbit is a prolific animal, for they are 
the life not only of the people, but of martens, 
lynx, foxes, ermine, owls, hawks and ravens. 

An ordinary family of Indians, living on 
plain boiled or roasted rabbits, require about 
twenty a day, and even that keeps their vitality 
a very little above zero. There is no doubt but 
what the food a man eats makes or lowers his 
valor and endurance. 

No one ever heard of the fish or rabbit-eat- 
ing Indians going on the war-path, while, on the 
other hand, the buffalo eaters were fearless men 
both as horsemen and fighters. 

The Labrador Peninsula, bounded by the 



WHOLESOME FOODS. 67 

Saguenay river on the west, Hudson's Bay and 
Straits on the north, the Atlantic seaboard on 
the east, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the 
south, a country as large as England, France 
and Austria combined, is the home of the Cari- 
bou or wood deer, who migrate north and south 
in countless herds spring and autumn, and are 
followed by bands of roaming Indians continu- 
ally preying on them. 

As in the case of the pemican, these Nasca- 
pies, Montagnais, and Cree Indians bring into 
the posts dried meats, marrow fat and tongues 
to barter, and on this the post dwellers live. 

With the Indians of the present day armed 
with modern rifles, and the great depletion in 
the calf-crop made by the marauding of wolves, 
the day cannot be far off that the caribou will 
be of the past as the buffalo is. 

In their migrations north and south, at cer- 
tain places well known to the natives, the deer 
have to cross rivers. Taking the crossings the 
mob of deer would compact itself so much that 
the traverse would be black with their bodies. 

The Indians who had been waiting for some 
clays the passing of the herd, would attack them 
from up and down the river in their canoes, 
shooting them with arrows, spearing and axing 
the poor frightened brutes in the water till the 



68 CANADIAN WILDS. 

lower waters were covered with floating car- 
casses. 

Much meat and many skins were spoiled for 
the want of quick attention. After the battle 
the Indians gorged themselves to such a state 
of repletion, that it rendered them unfit for ex- 
ertion, but a just God frequently punished them 
during the bitter weather of the following win- 
ter by starvation, and whole families succumbed 
for want of the very food they so wantonly 
wasted in the autumn. 

The Hudson's Bay Company had a post 
years ago on Lake Mis-a-ka-ma right on the ta- 
bleland between Ungava bay and the Canadian 
Labrador coast, for the trading of deer skins, 
both dressed and in the parchment state. One 
year the skins were in such numbers that the 
boats of the brigade could not carry the whole 
to the coast, and bales of them had to be win- 
tered over to the next year. 

The Labrador has been for many years the 
base of supplies for fish and rabbit districts, 
where the natives have no deer to make mocca- 
sins, mitts and shirts, and the parchment for 
their snowshoe knitting. 

These deer skins take a round about route to 
reach their destination, being in the first place 
shipped from Ungava, or Mgolette, to London, 
and after passing the winter in London, are re- 



WHOLESOME FOODS. 69 

shipped to Montreal, via the St. Lawrence, and 
from that depot sent with the new outfit to posts 
that have requisitioned them the previous year. 
One would think with the introduction of 
flour, pork and other imported provisions that 
the slaughter would be a thing of the past, but 
the killing goes on as before, and now only the 
skin is taken, the meat remaining to rot. 



/ 



CHAPTER IX. 

officers' allowances. 

To readers of H-T-T descriptions of modes 
of living in by-gone days will, no doubt, be as 
interesting as actual hunting or trapping. I 
therefore submit a reminiscence of days in the 
early sixties, gone never to return. 

Transport then to the far inland posts was 
so tedious and costly that it was impossible to 
freight heavy stuff so far away, and the em- 
ployees of the company had to live on what the 
company in which they were stationed produced. 
However, a scale of allowances of a few delica- 
cies were allowed, and these were made up every 
year at the depot of each district, and Avere for 
one year. The laborers or common people about 
the post got nothing in the way of imported pro- 
visions, except when at the hard work of trip- 
ping. The officers' scale Avas as follows, be he 
a married man or a single man, it made no dif- 
ference. Their seA r eral grades Avere as follows : 

Chief Factor, Chief Trader, Chief Clerk, Ap- 
prentice Clerk, Post Master. 

A Post Master did not mean a master of a 

70 



officers' allowances. 71 

post, but was generally a long service laborer, 
who could supervise the general work about the 
post and act as interpreter if required. He also 
received a minimum allowance from headquar* 
ters, but of fewer articles than that of clerks 
and officers. A Chief Factor, being of the high 
est grade in the service, received the largest 
allowance, which was as follows : 

Three hundred pounds flour, 336 lbs. sugar, 
18 lbs. black tea, 9 lbs. green tea, 42 lbs. raisins,, 
60 lbs. butter, 30 lbs. tallow candles, 3 lbs. mus- 
tard, 6| gal. port wine, 6| sherry wine, 3 gal. 
brandy. 

Exactly one-half of the Factor's allowance 
was the share of the Chief Trader, and a half 
of the latter's portion was the scale for a Chief 
Clerk or Apprentice Clerk. A Post Master 
however, not receiving the full list, I will give 
in detail. 

Fifty-six pounds sugar, 3 lbs. black tea, li 
lbs. green tea, 7 lbs. rice, \ lb. pepper, J lb. 
pimento. 

At every post where it was possible to grow 
potatoes they were given the greatest attention, 
as they constituted a very material place in the 
feeding of the post people. They were, how- 
-ever, kept under lock and key, and a weekly 
allowance given out, by the Post Master. At 
posts where cattle were kept the allowance of 



72 CANADIAN WILDS. 

butter was not supplied by headquarters, as we 
were supposed to make our own. 

The allowances never came up with the gen- 
eral outfit, but were sent up in bulk to the head 
quarters of the district, and there parceled out 
for each post in that Factor's territory. The 
clerks or officers in charge of these out-posts 
went to headquarters about the 15th of August 
with a half-sized canoe. This being a special 
trip, made especially for the allowance of any 
small thing that might have been overlooked in 
the indent, was called "The Allowance Canoe." 

A week was generally spent at headquarters 
in friendly intercourse with the staff there. The 
prospects for the ensuing year were talked over, 
and the requisition for the next year's outfit 
read carefully over, and any article requiring 
explanation or comment was then gone -into by 
the Factor while he had the framer of the indent 
at hand. 

This was the only time of the year that all 
the officers of that district met together, their 
respective posts being east, north and west, and 
hundreds of miles of forest and stream separat- 
ing them. This reunion was a red letter week, 
and no sooner were Ave back to our posts but 
we looked fonvard to the next meeting. I doubt 
very much if today such a self-reliant, hardy 



officers' allowances. 73 

and easily satisfied body of men could be found 
to fill similar circumstances. 

It was etiquette not to arrive at headquar- 
ters before the date appointed. Occasionally a 
canoe from some post would have made extra 
good time coming out, probably gaining a day 
or part of a day, and would camp back of some 
point almost in sight of "The Fort." A noted 
last place of call before reaching the fort was 
called "Point a la Barbe." 

Here a general clean-up took place, from a 
shave to clean linen and store clothes. As the 
lake upon which the fort is built Avas the main 
dropping-in thoroughfare from several parts of 
the interior, often two or three canoe parties 
would be at the "Point a la Barbe" at once. 

A start would be made from there together, 
and when the rocky point which had hidden 
them from view was rounded a "flee de joie" 
was fired from each canoe, the paddle seized, 
and in unison with the quick stroke of the 
"paddle for the avenue," one of the usual 
French canoe songs was sung by the voices of 
the combined fleet till the rocky shores repro- 
duced it from cliff to cliff. 

Almost with the firing of the first shot the 
people at the post who were on the lookout ran 
up the glorious old Hudson's Bay flag to the 
flagstaff head, and an answering volley was re- 



74 CANADIAN WILDS. 

turned. The handshaking, talk and laughter 
when the canoes beached was never to be for- 
gotten. 

Most of those at the fort had relatives or 
friends at one or other of the outposts, and if 
they were not present anxious inquiries were 
made and answered on the beach. Possibly some 
loved one had been called away since the last 
opportunity of communication with the fort; 
in such a case it devolved on some person of the 
new arrivals to break the sad news or receive 
bad tidings himself. In that case no words were 
necessary, the doAvncast look and the prolonged 
clasp of the hand told as well as words the be- 
reavement. I have witnessed such meetings, 
and know it was only hours after the meeting 
that the details were imparted by words, and 
that night far into the small hours could be 
heard the death chant of the sorrowing relative. 

Every night during our stay at headquarters 
our crews congregated at the men's guard room, 
and there hoed down the Ked Eiver Keels, and 
entered into other harmless pastimes till well up 
to midnight. During that week the former 
rigid discipline of the fort was considerably re- 
laxed in honor of the strangers. 

In the days of which I write liquor had been 
abolished for the servants and trade through- 
out the country, and a few years after even the 



officers' allowances. 75 

officer s' allowance of wine and brandy was cut 
off, so these dances were not attended by any 
discord or disturbance. 

When the rum allowance was done away 
with to the servants, they received in lieu there- 
of two sterling per annum added to their wages, 
and to the Indian who had been in the habit of 
getting a gill of rum for every ten "made-beaver" 
traded, was given one skin for every ten traded, 
taking whatever he chose, to the amount of the 
aggregated skins, in goods. 

For that one good deed alone, Sir George 
Simpson deserved the thanks of all throughout 
the territories when he abolished liquor as a 
stimulant to the men and a vehicle of trade with 
the natives. 

The officers received no equivalent when 
their allowance was discontinued. It was 
brought about by the bad use one officer made 
of his allowance, and the others suffered there- 
by. A clerk's allowance of wine and brandy 
was done up in three oak kegs, each wine keg 
holding 2\ gallons and the brandy one gallon. 
These were laced together with stout raw hide 
lashings, and the piece was called a "Maccrow," 
and a very awkward piece it was to portage. 

The majority of the officers made it a point 
of honor to debark the Maccrow unbroached at 
their respective posts, and make the contents 



76 CANADIAN WILDS. 

spin religiously through the next twelve 
months. Some could not withstand the tempta- 
tion of sampling the liquor enroute, and had 
very little when they reached home. 

It was one of these gentlemen who was the 
cause of the allowance being cut off. A petition 
was sent in to the Governor asking that we 
mould receive the equivalent in money for the 
discontinuance of wine and brandy, which 
amounted to seventeen dollars at cost price, but 
no answer came, and we had to bear our loss 
and offer up some nightly words in favor (or 
otherwise) of the person who had made an 
abuse of his allowance. * 



CHAPTER X. 

INLAND PACKS. 

Prior to 1865, furs at inland posts were made 
up in packs of ninety pounds for transport to 
the frontier, but some of the young canoe men 
were not sufficiently strong to handle such a 
weight in debarking or loading them into the 
canoes, and a pack slipping from their grasp 
into the water and becoming wet inside caused 
delay to the whole brigade. A stop had to be 
made and the damaged pack unlaced, dried and 
repaired, before the journey could be resumed. 

About the year mentioned, a top pack slipped 
off a man's back while being carried over a side 
portage, and before the man could save it had 
bounded down the hillside into the rapid, and 
was lost. 

This happened to be a very valuable pack- 
age, and its loss being reported called forth the 
next year, from headquarters, a general order 
to reduce the weight from ninety to eighty 
pounds per pack, and to make each package of 
pure skins — i. e., skins of only one kind. 

This order to discontinue the mixing of skins 
77 



78 CANADIAN WILDS. 

was not pleasing to post managers, inasmuch as 
a smaller and better pack can be constructed of 
mixed skins than of only one kind. 

For the information of trappers of to-day, I 
will give a summary of how many of each kind 
of skins made up, as nearly as possible, the pre- 
scribed weight of eighty pounds, thus: 

Forty large bSavers and 20 small beavers 
made 80 pounds. 

Eight large bears and 4 small bears made 
80 pounds. 

Five hundred spring rats, 80 pounds. 

Seven hundred and twenty large and small 
rats, fall, 80 pounds. 

Two beavers, large, for top and bottom cov- 
ers, and 60 lynx skins made 80 pounds. 

Two beavers for covers and 30 otters made 
80 pounds. 

Two beavers for covers and 50 fox skins 
made 80 pounds. 

We had orders to gather such furs avs fisher, 
ermine, wolf, wolverine, skunk, and any broken 
or damaged skins, and make up into a separate 
pack. 

The fine and delicate skins, as marten, mink, 
silver and cross foxes, were to be packed in 
boxes thirty inches long by twenty inches 
square, and into this small compass the martens 
and mink, after being tied in bundles of ten 



INLAND PACKS. 79 

skins each, were packed to the number of four 
hundred skins. 

This made a very valuable package, and the 
greatest care was taken of it the whole journey. 
Valuing them at only $5 each, one of these boxes 
represented the sum of $2,000. 

We all saw that this mode of packing would 
not last; as, taking the best of care, accidents 
will happen, and they began the very year after 
the order came in force. Leaving a disagreeable 
job to the last, the men at each carrying place 
avoided these boxes, and there was a struggle to 
see who would not carry them. The sharp cor- 
ners abraded the men's backs, and when carried 
on top of a pack they hurt the back of the head ; 
so, as a rule, they were generally left till the 
last load, and then taken with bitter comments, 
and a fervent wish that the promulgator of the 
order for such packages were himself present to 
portage them over the carry. 

Two of these marten boxes were left by one 
of our crews in the middle of a brule. In mak- 
ing the former trip some careless fellow must 
have thrown down a half -burnt match ; in a few 
moments dense clouds of smoke arose in their 
rear. The country was as dry as tinder, and 
in the space of a very few minutes the flames 
swept to the other end of the portage, licking 
up in passing those valuable boxes and contents. 



80 CANADIAN WILDS. 

We, figuratively, locked the cloor for the bal- 
ance of that trip after the horse had been stolen, 
for the remaining boxes were stored each night 
in the officers' tent, and during the day a re- 
sponsible person was on guard over them. 

It was a severe loss out of the returns of 
one post. No one, perhaps, could be blamed for 
it, but it had the desired effect of repealing the 
order, and we were told to pack as in the good 
"old corn-meal days," and mix our furs. 

To arrive at an average of each kind of skins 
through each and every pack, we counted the 
whole returns and estimated the gross weight, 
and then divided so many of each kind of furs 
through the several packs, something like this: 
10 beavers, 2 bears, 40 marten, 10 mink, 100 
rats, 4 foxes, 4 otters, 4 lynx — 80 pounds, or as 
the average might count out. 

Previous to packing, the skins were neatly 
folded, placed in a pile and weighted down for 
a week. They were then built in the desired 
pack shape and underwent a severe wedge press 
hammering to reduce the bulk, then tied with 
three strong cross lashings, either of raw cow- 
hide or twenty-four-thread cod line, and when 
all was secure, the wedges being released, the 
pack tumbled out complete, less the lateral ty- 
ings, which were two in number, of eighteen- 
thread cod line. 



INLAND PACKS. 81 

The size of one of these packs, ready for 
transportation, was 21 inches long, 17 inches 
broad, and 10 inches thick. The expansion of 
the compressed skins would, after a. few days, 
give it a rounded shape in the middle, but when 
first out of the press it was almost perfectly 
square, and it was the pride of each post man- 
ager to outdo the others in the beauty and solid- 
ity of his packs. 

A well-made pack would withstand the ill 
usage and the hundreds of handlings in making 
a journey of four or five hundred miles from an 
interior post, and would reach the first steamer 
or train of cars without a tying giving way. 
In niy young days I have seen a pile of 296 of 
these packs on the beach at one portage. 

An anecdote relating to the care of such a 
valuable cargo may be here appended. An old 
factor who had not left the interior for twenty- 
seven years, applied for and received leave to 
visit civilization with the understanding that 
he would take care of the furs in transit. This 
he did during a journey of days and weeks com- 
ing down the great river, standing at each }3ort- 
age till every pack was over, and checking them 
off by numbers and the aggregate. 

At last he reached steamboat navigation, 
shipped his packs, and had the bill of lading in 



82 CANADIAN WILDS. 

his pocket. Having shipped the furs he took 
passage on the same boat. Daring the midnight 
hours the captain, in making his rounds, was 
surprised to find a man sitting among the cargo. 
Who was this but Mr. S., still keeping his faith- 
ful watch. The captain asked why he was not 
abed in his stateroom. 

"Well/' he replied, "I saw rough deck hands 
going about the packs, and thought it better to 
keep an eye on them." 

The captain laughed. "Why, man," he said, 
'we have signed bills of lading for those goods, 
and we are responsible for their safe delivery. 
Go to bed, Mr. S.," he continued, "and rest in 
peace, for even you have no right to touch one 
of those packs, now they are aboard this ves- 
sel." 

That was in 1873, and I believe that old gen- 
tleman is alive yet. He retired many years ago 
and settled in Ontario. 



CHAPTER XL 

INDIAN MODE OF HUNTING BEAVER. 

Wa-sa-Kejic came over to the post early 
one October, and said his boy had cut his foot, 
and that he had no one to steer his canoe on a 
proposed beaver hunt. Now nice, fat beaver, 
just before the ice takes, is one of the tidbits 
that come to the trader's table, and having spare 
time just then I volunteered to accompany him, 
knowing I would get a share of the game. 

As we made our way over the several small 
portages between the large lake on which the 
post is built and the one in which he had located 
the beaver, he told me there were two lodges 
on the lake to which we were making our way. 

We pitched our tent on the last portage, so 
as not to make a fire near the beaver. Beavers 
have very poor eyesight, but very acute hearing 
and smell, and once they are frightened the 
sport for that night at all events is finished. 

We had something to eat and then started 

for the lake, leaving our tent and things ready 

to return to after dark. Smoking and talking 

are forbidden when one is in a beaver lake ; care 

" 83 



84 CANADIAN WILDS. 

also must be taken that the paddle does not rasp / 
the side of the canoe. 

The beavers had built an immense dam 
across the discharge of the lake, and left a small 
cut in the middle for the overflow to pass. Here 
Wa-sa-Kejic placed a No. 4 Newhouse trap in 
about 4 in. of water. On a twig- 9 in. high and 
set back about a foot from the trap he placed a 
small piece of castorum. The smell of this at- 
tracts a beaver. Then he lengthened the trap 
chain with three strands of No. 9 twine, tying 
it to a stout pole, which he planted very, very 
securely in deep water, out from the dam. 

The beaver, when he finds himself caught, 
springs backward into the deep water and dives 
to the bottom; here he struggled to get away 
until shortness of breath compels him to rise 
to the surface, and this is repeated until the 
weight of the trap is too much for his exhausted 
condition, and he died at the bottom, from 
whence he is hauled up by the hunter when 
next visiting his traps. 

After placing the trap on the dam Wa-sa- 
Kejic opened another ready for setting, tied the 
poles, and had everything ready; then giving 
me implicit injunctions not to make the least 
noise, told me to steer the canoe quietly to the 
lodge, which was fixed in a small bay out in the 
lake. When we reached the beaver's house, he 



INDIAN MODE OF HUNTING BEAVER. 85 

carefully placed the trap in the same depth of 
water as- he had done the previous one, with 
this difference, that he omitted the castor urn, 
because, as he told me afterward, the beavers 
went on top of the house every night, the young 
ones to slide down into the water, and the old 
ones to do any necessary plastering. 

Another trap was set at the next house, and 
from there we paddled the canoe a considerable 
distance from the beaver works, and figuratively 
rested on our oars until sundown. 

We were now going to try still-shooting 
them. Before night sets in about sundown each 
fine evening in the fall the beavers leave their 
lodge, first, to eat the young willows along the 
shore, and after satisfying their hunger to patch 
the dam, plaster their houses and cut young 
trees to store up for their next winter's food! 

They come to the surface on leaving the 
lodge, and unless something frightens them swim 
on the surface in and out along the borders of 
the lake until they see a favorable spot to go 
ashore; and here they set to nibbling the bark 
of young birch or popular, and if the hunter is 
careful he may be shot at close range. 

As I said before, talking while hunting bea- 
ver is forbidden; and the hunter conveys his 
wishes to the steersman by signs, thus : To draw 
his attention he oscillates the canoe slightly; 



86 CANADIAN WILDS. 

to move the canoe ahead the motion of paddling 
made by throwing the opening hand inboard; 
to alter the course of the canoe is done by sign- 
ing with the hand either to the right or to the 
left, as desired; to stop the canoe's headway 
when getting too close to the game is done by 
gentle downward patting of the hand, etc. 

Being already versed in this dumb language, 
we shoved away and took up a position near the 
lodge, but to the leeward of it, and waited. The 
sun having already gone down behind the for- 
est, on the other side of the lake, we had not 
long to wait until a beaver broke water and 
swam away in a direction from us. Wa-sa-Kejic 
shook his head, as much as to say, "We will go 
after that fellow later on." The first was fol- 
lowed quickly by a second, a third and a fourth ! 
Then, after waiting for fully fifteen minutes and 
no other appearing, Wa-sa-Kejic made signs to 
go ahead; this we did slowly, without taking 
the sharp-bladded paddle from the water. 

Presently we heard a noise as if a pig were 
supping up from a trough. This was one of the 
beavers crunching up young twigs in the water. 
The canoe was edged slowly toward the land, 
with Wa-sa-Kejic on the alert, both dogheads 
full-cocked and ready for action. Presently the 
downward motion of the hand" was given, the 
gun brought deliberately up to the shoulder, and 



INDIAN MODE OF HUNTING BEAVER. 87 

the next instant the explosion, followed almost 
as one shot by the second barrel! A thick 
smoke hung between us and the shore, but we 
could hear kicking and splashing of the water; 
that told the shot was true. The beaver had 
ceased to struggle by the time we reached the 
shore. "But for what was the other shot?" 
I asked Wa-sa-Kejic. 

"For that," he answered, pointing to an- 
other beaver stone, dead on the bank ; and then 
he laughed, for there was no necessity of keep- 
ing quiet any longer, for the shots had fright- 
ened any other beaver in the vicinity. 

"We may as well go to camp now," continued 
Wa-sa-Kejic, "and we will see our traps in the 
morning." 

Prom the fact of our having come ashore 
late, and perhaps more because of the hearty 
supper we made off of roast beaver, we did not 
awake until the sun was high. We immediately 
partook of a hasty breakfast of tea Gallette and 
pork and went to see the traps. 

"Fortunate?" Well, yes! We found one in 
each trap; and returned during the afternoon 
to the post. The Indian gave me the meat of 
two beavers for myself. 

He left his traps set to visit at some future 
time, because there were several animals yet 
in the lake. 



88 CANADIAN WILDS. 

Describing the mode of killing beaver would 
not be complete .unless we explained that of 
"trenching." This method of killing them is 
largely practiced by the Indians after the lakes 
and rivers are frozen over. I cannot do better 
than to describe a small lake that Wa-sa-Kejic 
and I went to trench in December. This beaver 
lodge I had found the very last day of open 
water, for that night the wind turned round 
north and froze up everything! As it was close 
to the post, and I had found it, I simply made 
a bargain with Wa-sa-Kejic to do the trenching 
for a pound of tea. In those days tea was tea 
in the remote interior, and meant many a cheer- 
ing cup to the Indian. 

Wa-sa-Kejic whistled his dogs after him 
when we left camp in the morning. The lake 
lay in the hollow of a mountain of considerable 
height, and could be compared to an inch of 
water in the bottom of a teacup. Before we 
were half down the precipitous sides we saw the 
dogs nosing around the shore, scenting £or the 
beavers in their "washes" or breathing holes. 
Wa-sa-Kejic, when he cast his eye around the 
small body of water, said, "This is an easy lake, 
and the beaver will soon all be dead." 

He now produced an ordinary socket chisel 
of 1^ in. point, and in a few minutes had this 
handled with a young tamarak about 6 ft. long. 



INDIAN MODE OF HUNTING BEAVER. 89 

We each carried an axe, and the first order I got 
was to cnt some dry sticks that stood at the dis- 
charge, each stick to be about 4 ft, long. These, 
as fast as cut, the Indian drove across the creek, 
after he had cut a trench in the thin ice from 
shore to shore. This was to prevent the beaver 
from going down the creek. 
. The next thing was to break open the lodge 
from the top. This was done to scare the bea- 
vers out into the lake and make them resort to 
the washes. The beaver washes have their en- 
trances under water, and go up sometimes a 
considerable distance from the shore, terminat- 
ing generally under the roots of a tree. The 
beavers flee from wash to wash, as the hunter 
finds them out, and as each wash is discovered 
by the dogs (which scent the beavers through 
the frozen surface) the hunter stakes up the 
entrance to prevent them from returning. 

Beaver washes vary in number according to 
the formation of the lake, from two to three up 
to twenty. The practiced eye of the hunter tells 
him at once if the lake has few or many, xlnd 
this is why Wa-sa-Kejic said we would soon 
kill the beaver. At last the three dogs remained 
pointing and listening about 12 ft from the 
shore under a spruce of considerable size. The 
Indian set to work to stake up the entrance, 
which he did as fast as I could furnish the 
sticks. 



90 CANADIAN WILDS. 

On the shore of this barricade he cleared 
away the ice and snow, making an opening 
about the size of a barrel head, and then he 
paused, and pointing to the water, said, "See 
that! That's the beaver breathing!" This was 
shown by the water's surface gently rising and 
falling. 

He now took off his coat, and baring his 
right arm up to the shoulder he gave me the 
ice chisel and told me to pierce the ground 
where the dogs were pointing. I had hardly 
given a blow or two before I saw Wa-sa-Kejic 
stoop over the hole and plunge his naked arm 
into the water. Instantly it was withdrawn, 
and a big fat beaver, securely seized by the tail, 
was struggling in his grasp. A blow of his axe 
on the spine finished him in quick order, and 
this, was repeated from time to time as I con- 
tinued to enlarge the hole where the beavers 
were huddled together under the roots. 

We got six out of this wash, and two out of 
another, which constituted all that were in the 
lake. Two each made a very good load for ns 
going home, and the next day I sent a man with 
a flat sled to bring home the remaining four. 

The three principal modes of killing beavers 
are by shooting, trapping, trenching. 



INDIAN MODE OF HUNTING BEAVER. 91 

As a haunt and home of the inuskrat, I ven- 
ture to say that Cumberland, on the Saskatche- 
i wan, is the banner producing post on this con- 
tinent. For miles and miles about this trading 
place there are immense grassy marshes, cut up 
and intersected by waterways and lagoons in 
every direction. From a hundred to a hundred 
and fifty thousand musquash skins Avas the 
usual returns from the post a few years ago. 
Three times during the year the hunters made 
their harvest, first in October, when the little 
animals were busy making their funny little 
cone mud houses and cutting bunches of long 
grass for their winter's food. 

At that time the Indian would set his bunch 
of Xo. 1 steel traps before sundown and then 
lay off in his canoe at a short distance from 
the shore in some pond and shoot at those swim- 
ming past until it became too dusk to fire. Then 
he would make to some place to dry ground, haul 
up his canoe, make a fire and have his supper. 
When his after-meal pipe was finished he would 
silently shove his canoe into the water and make 
his first visit. When setting his traps he would 
take the precaution to place on the end of the 
pole that the chain was fastened to, a piece of 
paper, a bunch of grass or a piece of birch bark. 
This enabled him to find his traps in the dark, 
as the sign would show on the sky line as he 



92 CANADIAN WILDS. 

paddled slowly along sitting low down in his 
canoe. The looking at his traps and resetting 
of them would take him an hour or two, then 
he would come back to his fire place, throw the 
rats he had caught in a pile, replenish the fire 
and stretch out for another smoke. About ten 
o'clock he would make another visit and on his 
return make a lasting fire, roll himself in his 
Hudson's Bay blanket and sleep till morning. 

Often two visits were made in the morning, 
one just at the screech of day, and the last one 
after he had had his breakfast. Traps were 
taken up at this first visit to be set in some 
other locality that afternoon, and the hunter 
would paddle away for his lodge, where he 
would sleep all the forenoon while his wife and 
children were skinning and stretching the pelts. 
The next and every night would be spent in the 
same way until the ice took, and then another 
mode of sport I wish to describe would take 
place. 

Ice in one night on these shallow waters was 
sufficiently strong to support the weight of one 
man. Armed with a long barbed spear a couple 
of feet in length, lashed to a stout pole, a bag 
on his back to put the rats in, and sometimes 
followed by a boy at a distance, the Indian, with 
his bright steel skates firmly buckled on, would 
glide down and in and out these skate lanes 



INDIAN MODE OF HUNTING BEAVER. 93 

looking for rat houses. Practice and experience 
taught him to get over the ice in the least noisy 
way. Instead of striking out one foot after the 
other, he skated as the people of Holland do 
by a motion of the hips. It is not a graceful 
way, but it is easy on the skater of long distances 
on new glare ice. Sliding, as it were, down to 
one of the mud cones with spear firmly grasped, 
he would drive it down into the center, and very 
rarely missed transfixing one and at times two 
of the highly perfumed little animals. 

The interior of a rat house is a saucer-like 
hollow in the center, just a little above the level 
of the water. From the edge of this there may 
be three or four slideways into deep water. At 
the least alarm the rats tumble down these in 
a minute and only return when all danger is 
past. When the inhabitants of a single house 
number eight, ten or twelve and they huddle 
together for warmth, they are often one on top 
of another, and thus the spear passes thru two 
at one thrust. The yet unfrozen mud is torn 
away and the spear with the rats lifted out, dis- 
patched and placed in the bag, and the hunter 
bears down to another house and so on thru the 
day. When the bag becomes too heavy it is 
emptied out on the ice and the hunt continued. 
Towards night the Indian retraces his road and 
picks up the piles he left earlier in the day. His 



94 CANADIAN WILDS. 

leather bag is converted into a sled, the ends of 
his long waisted sash are tied to the bag, and 
with the loup over his shoulder he strikes out 
a road straight for his camp, well pleased with 
his day's sport and himself. Knowledge of the 
architecture of the musquash's house (for they 
are > all modeled in the same way) enables a 
bush man to know just where the little family 
are huddled. 

There is yet another way numbers are killed 
just after the ice takes, and before the mud 
houses become too hard frozen; that is to skate 
down on them shot gun in hand and fire right 
into the cone of mud. The effect is not known 
till the earth is pulled away. The shot being 
fired at such close range there is, not unfre- 
quently, three or four dead rats. One can not 
help to moralize how cruel it is for man to 
destroy at a moment the labors of long nights 
of these industrious little animals, and cause 
the remaining one to patch up the break at a 
season when it can never be as good and warm 
as when the work is done during open weather. 

The hunter therefore sets his traps, so as to 
keep them employed, but he kills the greater 
number with his gun. A very small charge of 
powder and shot is required, and if the hunter 
keeps perfectly quiet in his canoe, and is below 
the wind, he can call the rat to within ten feet 



INDIAN MODE OF HUNTING BEAVER. 95 

of his gun. I have pushed by canoe out from 
the shore of a small lake and called, just about 
sundown, and have counted no fewer than six 
rats coming from as many different directions, 
One waits till they get so close that they sheer 
off, and then fire sideways at the head. 



CHAPTER XII. 

INDIAN MODE OF HUNTING LYNX AND MARTEN. 

Snaring *is the principal way in which the 
lynxes are killed by the North American In- 
dians. After a heavy fall of snow, however, if 
an Indian crosses a fresh lynx track, he imme- 
diately gives chase, even if he has only his belt 
axe. 

The hunter only follows very fresh tracks, 
and in a short time comes up with the big cat. 
As soon as the animal knows it is pursued, it 
either climbs a tree or crouches under some 
thick shrub. If the hunter finds it up a tree, 
he sets to work at once to cut down the tree 
(that is if he has no gun). As soon as the tree 
totters he makes his Avay in the direction which 
it is to fall. The lynx clings to the tree until 
near the ground, and then springs clear. While 
he is floundering in the snoAV, the Indian brave- 
ly runs in and knocks him with his axe. Of 
course, if he has his gun, he simply shoots the 
cat and it tumbles dead to the foot of the tree. 
The feat of running down a lynx and shooting 
him with a bow and arrow is what all Indian 

96 



MODE OF HUNTING LYNX AND MARTEN., 97 

youths aim to accomplish ; they are then consid- 
ered hunters. 

Lynxes are always found in greatest num- 
bers where their natural food supply is most 
plentiful. They feed usually on rabbits and 
partridges, and these are to be found in young 
growth of such trees as pitch pine, birch and 
poplar. 

The Indian also, when he is dependent on 
rabbits, lives on the border of such a country, 
and has long lines of snares which he visits two 
or three times a week. Along this snare road 
at certain distances he has his lynx snares, 
which are nothing different from those set for 
rabbits, except being much larger. Yes, there 
is another difference: Instead of the snare be- 
ing tied to a tossing x^ole, it is simply tied to a 
stout birch stick, 3 or 4 feet long by about 2 
inches in diameter. The extreme ends of this 
are lodged on two forked sticks, and the snare 
hanging down in the middle is then set, tied 
to small dry twigs on each side to keep it in 
position. 

At the back of the snare, at about 2 or 3 feet, 
the head and stuffed skin of a rabbit is fixed un- 
der some brush. The skin is filled with moss, 
or pine brush, and is fixed so as to look as much 
as possible like a live rabbit in its form. The 

7 



D8 CANADIAN WILDS. 

head being to. the skin gives it the natural shape 
and smell, and the lynx, walking leisurely along 
the snowshoe track, notices the game and makes 
a spring for it through the snare. In his head- 
long bound he carries snare and cross stick 
along with him, and as soon as he feels the cord 
tightening about his neck he not infrequently 
becomes his own executioner by getting his fore- 
feet on the stick and pulling backwards as hard 
as he can. The more he struggles, the madder 
he gets, and pulls the harder to free himself, but 
this is, on the contrary, only making matters 
worse. The loop of the noose gets matted into 
the soft, thick hair of the throat, and there is 
no "slack" after that; in a few moments the 
great cat is dead. 

Sometimes the lynx carries the cross stick in 
his mouth and climbs a tree. This is invariably 
the last tree he ever climbs, because once up the 
tree he lets the stick drop and it hangs down, 
generally on the opposite side of the limb from 
that on which the lynx is. As the cat goes 
down the tree on one side, the cross stick goes 
up toward the limb on the other and gets "fixed 
in the crotch. As soon as the cord tightens 
about his neck he tries the harder to get down, 
and is consequently hanging himself. 

Lynxes are very stupid. They will even put 
their foot into an open and exposed steel trap; 



MODE OF HUNTING LYNX AND MARTEN. 99 

and the better-off Indians often use small No. 
1 traps instead of snares. This, however is only 
done latterly, and by the very well-off Indians. 
As a rule Indians only have traps for beaver, 
otter, fox and bear. 

Lynxes are very rarely seen in summer, keep- 
ing close to the thickest bush. In any case, the 
skin is then of no value, and they are far from 
being "a thing of beauty," with nothing but a 
bare skin. 

In the prime state they are largely used on 

the continent as linings, and each skin is worth 

about |4. 

* * * 

There are three kinds or qualities of martens 
recognized by the trappers. 

First. — The pine marten that is found in the 
country covered by soft woods, such as pine, 
spruce, white fir and birch. This is the most 
numerous and consequently the skins are of 
least value. They are of yellowish brown color 
on the back and orange on the throat, changing 
down to pale yellow or white on the belly. 

Second. — The rock .marten; this is found in 
a country with stunted growth of spruce tim- 
ber, a very mountainous district, the chief fea- 
tures of which are great crevices and boulders. 
Some of the skins of this variety are of great 



100 CANADIAN WILDS. 

beauty, being dark on back, and throat and sides 
of gray or stone color. 

The third kind, which is the scarcest, and 
consequently of most value, is the marten found 
in the black spruce country, or swamps of north- 
ern Labrador. The fur of this variety is of a 
deep brown color throughout the pelt, and at 
times the tips of the hairs on the rump are sil- 
ver gray or golden brown. The latter are very 
rare, and such skins have been sold in the Lon- 
don fur market for £5 a piece! They are also 
much larger than the other kinds, the skins of 
the male often being from 24 to 30 inches long, 
exclusive of the tail. 

The proper and most successful time for 
hunting is in the latter days of November and 
the whole month of December. They are hunted 
again in March, but by that time the sun has 
bleached out the color of the hair, which causes 
a depreciation in value. 

As a business, trapping is the only mode of 
killing martens. They are rarely seen to be 
shot at, as they pass the days in thickets or hol- 
low stumps, only emerging after nightfall to 
hunt their food, which consists of mice, birds, 
young partridges, etc. 

Wooden traps are made in the well-known 
"figure-of-four" shape, and are set either on 



MODE OF HUNTING LYNX AND MARTEN. 101 

stumps or on the snow, flattened doAvn with the 
snowshoes, and the trap built thereon. 

It is considered a very good day's work in 
December for a trapper to construct, bait and 
set up twenty-five such traps. A real marten 
hunter (nothing to do with my name) camps 
each night at the end of his day's work until he 
has from 150 to 200 traps set! He generally 
visits them once in ten days or a fortnight, and 
if the catch averages one marten to ten traps it 
is considered very fair. 

It takes the hunter two full days to rebait, 
clean out and freshen up such a line. When 
small steel traps are used instead of the dead- 
fall, the hunter can cover more ground in a day 
and do better work than by making all wood 
traps. The steel traps are much more fortunate 
than the wood ones. In the a figure-of-four" 
traps, before the animal is caught it must seize 
the bait with its teeth and pull strong enough 
to set off the trap, whereas with the steel trap 
the mere fact of his coming to the doorway to 
smell insures his putting his foot in it, and in a 
moment up hangs Mr. Marten or Mr. Mink, as 
the case may be! 

Of course the steel traps have this disadvant- 
age — they are weighty ; that is, when you have 
fifty and over on your back, but the man who 
follows trapping as a business can very easily 



102 CANADIAN WILDS. 

overcome this difficulty by placing catches of 
traps at different places by canoe near where he 
proposes to have his line in the winter; and he 
can then branch off now and again for a new 
supply as he is setting up his trap road. 

This leaving the main road at right angles 
once in a while might even be a source of profit 
to the trapper, for he might come across a bear 
den or a beaver lodge, or fall on deer tracks, and 
if he succeeded in killing a deer some of the 
sinewy parts would come in to bait his traps. 

The taking of the skins of these little ani- 
mals is very simple. The knife is used only 
about the head ; once back of the ears the skin 
is drawn steadily until the tail is reached, the 
core of which is drawn out, either by a split 
stick or by the stiff thumb nail of the trapper. 
The skin is then dried on flat (three) splints, 
and when dried sufficiently to prevent it spoil- 
ing is tied up with others to the number of ten 
in each bundle, and are thus taken to the trader 
or fur dealer. ' 

The first purchaser from the trapper gener- 
ally buys them at an average price, but he sells 
them to the manufacturer selected; that is, get- 
ting a high price for the dark and a low price for 
the yellow or pale. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

INDIAN MODES OF HUNTING FOXES. 

The fox as a rule' is a most wily animal, and 
numerous are the stories of his cunning toward 
the Indian hunter, -with his steel traps. 

Starvation makes them catch in deadfalls, 
but they must be very starved indeed before 
they pull a piece of frozen bait and have a 
weight fall on their back. The skins of foxes 
killed during starvation are never so valuable 
as the hair then lacks the rich gloss. When 
small game is plenty, such as rabbits and part- 
ridges, and foxes are few, the skins are of a 
deep richness not seen under other circum- 

stances. *•„„+ ™i 

There are several different and distinct col- 
ors of foxes of thenorth country. They are all 
of the same family, with the single exception 
of the white or arctic fox. These, apart from 
their difference of color, differ very much in 
their characteristics. They are not cunning ; on 
the contrary, they are positively stupid The 
will readily catch in deadfalls, and will walk 
into an open, uncovered steel trap in daylight. 



104 CANADIAN WILDS. 

Again the flesh of the arctic fox is eaten as 
readily as that of the hare or white partridge; 
all other foxes are carrion; even a starving In- 
dian would give them the go-by. 

Of the other or true fox we have many col- 
ors and shades of color, and I give them in their 
cash value rotation, beginning with the black 
or pole fox; First, black or pole; second, black 
silver; third, silver gray; fourth, black cross; 
fifth, dark cross; sixth, ordinary cross; sev- 
enth, light cross; eighth, dark blue (i. e., lead 
color ) ; ninth, light blue ; tenth, bright red ; 
eleventh, light red; twelfth, arctic white; thir- 
teenth, pale red. 

Number thirteen is the poorest quantity of 
the fox family, and is worth less than the arctic 
white fox. 

January is the best month for trapping. 
First, because the fur is then at its primest, and 
second, food is harder to get and the fox conse- 
quently more likely to enter a trap. 

Of course, any number of traps will catch a 
fox, but not every trap will hold him. There is 
such a thing as the trap being too large and 
strong, as well as too small and weak! When 
too large and strong it catches too high up the 
leg, and being too strong it breaks the bone at 
the same time; and then in cold weather it's 
only a question of a few minutes for the frozen 



INDIAN MODES OF HUNTING FOXES. 105 

skin and muscles of the leg to be twisted off and 
Master Fox runs away on three legs, ever after 
to be too cunning to be caught in a trap. On 
the other hand, if the trap is too small and weak 
it catches the fox by the toes, and he either pulls 
his foot clear at once or the toes, becoming 
frozen and insensible to feeling, are twisted off • 
and this, if anything, is a harder fox to circum- 
vent than the one with half a leg. 

The proper trap to use is a Newhouse No. 
2. When properly set it catches just above all 
the ringers, as it were, or where the paw or foot 
would correspond with the thick part of the 
hand. There is a good, solid hold of muscles, 
sineAvs, etc. There, once the jaws are fixed, 
they hold the fox to the death. 

Fox hunters are very particular to keep 
everything connected with the trapping away 
from the house or camp, even wearing an out- 
side pair of moccasins, which are peeled off and 
hung up with the snowshoes. 

The hunter generally places his trap or traps 
on some bare point jutting out into the lake, or 
some narrows, or near a clump of willows at the 
edge of barren grounds, or any other place his 
judgment tells him a fox is likely to pass. The 
fewer signs the better; therefore instead of the 
chain being tied to a picket, a stick 4 or 5 ft. 
long is slipped through the ring on the chain up 



106 CANADIAN WILDS. 

to the middle. Here it is securely fastened, so 
that it won't slip either way. A trench the 
length of the stick is cut down in the snow with 
the head of the axe, and the pole laid therein 
about a foot beneath the surface. Snow is then 
piled in and the whole packed hard. 

The trap is now opened, and the snow packed 
down with the back of the man's mitt, large 
enough to lay the trap and spring therein. The 
trap is now open and about 2 in. lower than 
the surrounding snow. The hunter now begins 
carefully to lay fine flat balsam bows or clusters 
of needles from the palate out to the jaws until 
the whole is covered ; then very gently he either 
dusts light snow over this until it has the same 
appearance as the rest or he takes up two large 
pieces of frozen snow and rubs them together 
over the trap amtil all is covered. 

Chopped up frozen meat or fish, a supply of 
which the trapper is provided with, is now 
sprinkled or thrown about, beginning 15 or 20 
ft. off and gradually getting more plentiful as 
the trap is neared. 

With a brush- brooin the hunter dusts his 
snowshoe tracks full as he recedes from the 
trap until he is off 30 or 40 ft.; after that no 
further precaution is necessary for an ordinary 
fox. But for an extraordinary one I could re- 
late a hundred different ways of setting traps 



INDIAN MODES OF HUNTING FOXES. 107 

and bait to overreach the wily old fellow; but 
in most cases it is time wasted, the fox eating 
the bait and turning the traps over night after 
night, much to the vexation of the hunter. 

It is a pretty sight to see a black or silver 
gray fox jumping in a trap on the pure white 
snow. I went one time with Wa-sa-Kejic to see 
his traps in the barren grounds back of the post. 
I was following in his snowshoe tracks steadily, 
and we were just topping a small swell in the 
country, here and there clumps of black willows. 
All at once he stopped so suddenly in his tracks 
that I fell up against him. 

"There," he said, '"look at that!" My eye 
followed his finger, and there, jumping and 
struggling to get away, was a large black fox! 

"Let me shoot him," I exclaimed, drawing 
my gun cover as I spoke. 

"Oh, no," he replied, "we will only do that 
if he pulls himself clear of the trap." And with 
that he drew his belt axe and walked with a 
steady step down on the fox. The closer he got 
the more the fox struggled, but he was well 
and freshly caught, and the trap held him fast. 

Wa-sa-Kejic gave him a tap on the nose with 
the helve of the axe, which had the effect of 
stunning him. The Indian then seized him with 
his left hand by the throat, and with his right 
hand felt for his heart; this he drew gradually 



108 CANADIAN WILDS. 

down toward the stomach until the heart strings 
gave way; there was a quiver, and the fox was 
thrown down on the snow limp and dead. 

What a pleased look the Indian wore as he 
stood there, evidently oblivious to my presence 
for the moment, as he gazed down on the most 
valuable skin it was possible for him to trap. 
What a number of necessaries and luxuries this 
would procure for his family. He would get 
from the factor at the post $80 for that one 
single skin ! What a number of any other skins 
it would take to amount to that sum! 



CHAPTER XIV. 

INDIAN MODES OF HUNTING OTTER AND MUSQUASH. 

With steel or wooden traps is the only sys- 
tematical way of hunting these animals. They 
are, of course, hunted for their pelts in the north 
country of Canada, and not for sport, as in Scot- 
land. A few are shot, but these are met with 
by chance. 

November is when the Indian sets his traps 
for otters. They have then their full winter 
coats on; and it is just before the small lakes 
and rivers set fast. 

Their resort is generally in some chain of 
small lakes with creeks connecting the chain, 
and their home, if they can find one, is an empty 
beaver lodge. They prefer such a place, as af- 
ter the ice is taken in fishing along shore, they 
carry the fish into one of the "washes," where 
they can breathe and eat with safety and com- 
fort. 

The otter is a great enemy of the beaver, but 
never willingly courts an encounter; yet, every 
time they meet, there is a terrible battle. I re- 
member years ago coming out on a small lake 

109 



110 CANADIAN WILDS. 

about sundown, and seeing a great commotion 
on the surface of the water a few hundred yards 
out, jumped into my canoe and quietly paddled 
out. As I drew near, I noticed two black ob- 
jects engaged in a deadly conflict. Although 
they must have observed the canoe, they paid no 
attention, but continued the fight, sometimes 
disappearing beneath the surface, fast to 'each 
other, for a full minute. 

When within gunshot, I made out the com- 
battants to be an otter and a beaver, and could 
have despatched the two with one shot, only I 
could plainly see they were both very much ex- 
hausted, and I wished to see which would gain 
the day. 

The end was nearer than I expected. Once 
more they disappeared beneath the waters, each 
maintafning the same deadly grip of the other's 
neck; a few moments later the beaver floated to 
the surface on its back, dead. I looked about 
for the otter, and saw him swimming toward the 
shore, bleeding profusely from many wounds 
and evidently hurt to the death. I followed, 
however, with my gun full cocked, ready if need 
be to shoot him; but the beaver's long, sharp, 
spade-like teeth had done their work well, for 
the otter all at once rose half out of the water, 
pawed about for a minute in a blind way, turned 



HUNTING OTTER AND MUSQUASH. Ill 

over on his side, gave one convulsive quiver, and 
he also was dead. 

A No. 3 Newhouse trap is generally used. 
In fact, this number is called throughout the 
country "otter trap." These traps are set at the 
overflow of beaver dams and otter slideways 
during the open water and at little portages 
used by water rats crossing from one bend of a 
small river to another. No bait is used; the 
trap is set in about 4 inches of water with a 
picket out in deep water to tie the chain to and 
a small piece of castorum on a forked stick. 

The odor of the beaver castor has a very al- 
luring effect on most all animals, and is greatly 
used by the hunter. 

Traps for otters are set in the following way, 
under the ice : A place is selected in some small 
creek, connecting two lakes, where signs of ot- 
ters are found. These signs are noticeable at 
the discharge of the lake, where the lake ice thins 
off into open water, for the ice is so thin that 
the otter readily breaks a hole to come out on- 
the ice to eat the fish. The otter is a fish-eating 
animal, and is very expert in catching them. 

Their slideways are generally made on some 
moss-covered, rocky promontory, jutting out 
into a lake. Here they will climb up one side 
and slide down the other for hours at a time. 



112 CANADIAN WILDS. 

Otters, when taken young, are readily tamed 
and become great pets. 

Another way of setting traps in winter is un- 
der the ice in some creek where otters are known 
to resort. The ice is cut away from the bank, 
outward, for about 3 feet long by 1 foot or so 
wide. Each side of this cut is staked with dry 
sticks, driven into the mud or sandy bottom. 
The trap is set between the stakes at the outer 
end, in about 4 inches of water at least; that 
is, the water may be deeper than that, but two 
cross sticks are so placed that the otter in en- 
tering must go under the sticks and thus gets 
caught. The picket to secure the trap chain to 
is out from the trap, as in open-water time. 

To induce him to enter, a small whitefish or 
trout is placed on a forked stick near the shore, 
and is so fixed that it appears to be alive and 
swimming. As soon as the trap is struck, the 
otter jumps backward into deep water, and for 
want of air is soon dead. 

* * * 

In Canada and the United States, the kill- 
ing of the little animal known under the several 
names of water rat, musquash and muskrat is 
so well understood by the average frontier boy 
that any information I can give would be per- 
haps a repetition. 

Still there is one way that the Indian prac- 



HUNTING OTTER AND MUSQUASH. 113 

tices which is certainly not known to the whites, 
and is at a certain time very successful. That 
is spearing them on the ice; and another mode 
in which the Indians are very successful in the 
fall is digging them out, or "trenching" them, 
in the same way they do the beaver, only with 
much less labor, as it is done before the ponds 
and creeks freeze up. I will describe the latter 
way first, seeing it comes before that of spearing. 

The resort of musquash (always where they 
are in numbers) is along grassy rivers, creeks, 
or ponds; for they store up large quantities of 
the long, flat grass for winter use, as the beaver 
does with young birch and poplar. The Indian 
paddling along the shores of such places has his 
eyes fixed on the bottom of the water ; presently 
he perceives the entrance to one of the rat bur- 
rows; he stops his canoe and gazes fixedly on 
the opening, which is always about a foot under 
water. At last he sees the water ebb and flow 
in and out of the hole. 'This is a sure sign that 
the "wash" is occupied at that very moment by 
one or more rats. 

He at once, either with his axe or the blade 
of his sharp maple paddle, chops down the mud 
bank until he has an embankment or dam. This 
is to prevent the musquash from running out to 
deep water. « When all is ready, either his wife 

'8 



114 CANADIAN WILDS. 

or the boy who is steering the canoe is sent 
ashore to prod about the honey-combed bank 
with the handle of his paddle. The little ani- 
mals thus disturbed and thoroughly frightened 
make a rush for the outlet, deep water and 
safety, but (there is always a "but") the Indian, 
with his upraised paddle, has his eye steadily 
fixed on the water back of his dam, and as fast 
as one makes its appearance the sharp edge of 
the paddle is brought down on its head or back, 
and it is thrown into the canoe, quivering in its 
death agony. From two to eight or nine are 
not infrequently taken from one hole. When 
the last- one is killed, the Indian moves his canoe 
on until he finds another * colony, and the same 
process is gone over again, and he returns to his 
camp with his canoe filled with musquash. I 
have in the fall received from one Indian as 
many as 2,000 skins, large and small. 

Musquash breed twice in the summer, and 
bring forth at each litter from six to eight. In 
the fall the large ones fetch the hunters ten 
cents, and the kits, or small ones, five cents. 

i The spearing of the musquash is done in this 
wise : The rats throw up little mud-cone lodges, 
or houses, out from the shore, in about a foot of 
water. They are not unlike beaver lodges. The 
inside is hollow and the entrance is under water. 
In this resort the rats sit, huddled together, dur- 



HUNTING OTTER AND MUSQUASH. 115 

ing most of the severe winter weather. The 
hunter, therefore, as soon as the ice will" bear 
his weight, slides up to the rat houses, armed 
with a sharp, barbed, steel spear, about a foot 
long, let into the end of a small tamarac han- 
dle. This handle is generally about 8 feet long. 
Arriving close to the lodge, he poises the spear 
in mid-air for a moment and drives it down 
through the lodge with all his might. If he 
pierced a rat, he feels it wriggling on the spear, 
and keeps it fast there until he has torn away 
the mud and grass. He then seizes it by the tail 
and draws it with a jerk from the spear and 
knocks it on the ice, which finishes Mr. Rat. At 
times, when there are a number of musquash in 
the same lodge at the same time, the spear often 
passes through two, or even three, at one stroke. 
This is great sport where the lodges are numer- 
ous. 

Musquash killed under the ice are worth two 
or three cents each more than in the fall, and 
the hunter makes frequently two to four dollars 
a day while it lasts. 

The flesh of musquash killed under the ice 
is highly esteemed by the Indians. It has then 
its winter fat on, and is free from the objection- 
able odor which prevails in the spring. 

The skins of the large ones, when dressed, 
make strong and durable lining for cloaks, coats, 



116 CANADIAN WILDS. 

etc., and are made up into caps also. The "kit 
skins" are used in large numbers in the manu- 
facture of kid gloves. The Hudson Bay Com- 
pany exports annually about 3,000,000 skins. 



CHAPTER XV. 

REMARKABLE SUCCESS. 

Of all the lucky hunters I ever knew I accord 
the bun to Na-ta-way. He was one of the en- 
gaged servants at the post in Canada, and when- 
ever he put on his snowshoes and sailed forth 
from the gates, some creature or bird would 
cross his path or vision. To do this and come 
within reasonable distance of Na-ta-way's small 
bore, muzzle-loading rifle was sure and speedy 
death to the unfortunate beast or bird. 

I could never understand why he chose to be 
a servant in the Company in preference to be- 
ing free to roam the lakes, rivers and forests, 
because had he elected to follow the occupation 
Qf a trapper and hunter he could not have failed 
to make double the money. Other Indians had 
traps set all around and quite near the post and 
yet Na-ta-way would kill as much as the average 
one, with only a poor half day off and his day 
on Sunday. 

I never saw his equal for quickness in set- 
ting deadfalls or rabbit snares. However, this 
partakes more of a biography than what I set 

117 



118 CANADIAN WILDS. 

out to relate, and yet it is an indispensable di- 
gression to enable the reader to believe the won- 
derful and remarkable success this man had one 
day when he was given leave from daylight to 
night. There was a weighty reason for this 
extra freedom from duty for the fact Avas the 
post people were short of meat. The month was 
April and our frozen supply nearly used up. 

Na-ta-way knew of a single moose yard, or 
more properly speaking, a yard with a single 
moose as occupant. To kill a lone moose on the 
crust does not require the combined efforts of 
two or more persons, therefore Na-ta-way was 
told to go and kill the moose and skin and quar- 
tre the animal, which considering the distance 
to go and come, amounted to a very good day's 
work. But Na-ta-way besides doing this and 
doing it well, accomplished much more. 

Coming down from the moose mountain to 
get better walking, he crossed the fresh tracks 
of a large bear. This was nuts to our man. He 
immediately turned aside and followed up the 
trail, ramming down one of his little pea bullets 
as he went. The heat of the morning sun had 
softened the crust of the night and Mr. Bruin 
was making headway with difficulty. In fact, 
Na-ta-way had not gone over half a mile when 
he sighted the bear and was very soon close up 
to him. 



REMARKABLE SUCCESS. 119 

The bear had two kind of ideas. One was to 
climb a tree and the second to run away, neither 
of which was carried into effect, for a bullet 
stopped the cowardly act of running, and a 
second one in the ear stilled him forever. The 
skin and the paws were all the hunter carried 
away. The meat would be got when the men 
came for the moose. 

Na-ta-way was very soon swinging on down 
the mountain and struck a creek which emptied 
into one of a chain of lakes, that in turn drained 
into the big Ka-kee-bon-ga lake upon which the 
post was situated. Following down this creek 
he noticed ahead of him a mink, working his 
way up along the shore, noseing every hole as 
he came. Nothing was too big or too small for 
Na-ta-way. Poor little mink! 

When he got abreast of the man on the ice, 
stood on its hind legs to get a better view of the 
strange object, but at that instant its sight be- 
came blurred, for it tumbled over dead. It was 
so full of life, energy and curiosity a few mo- 
ments ago, was now being carried on the In- 
dian's back, shoved into the folds- of the bear 
skin. 

But then, if we moralize, a man is walking 
with elastic step along a street when Presto! 
the heart stops, and he is being carried feet fore- 



120 CANADIAN WILDS. 

most by some three or four horror-struck pedes- 
trians. 

The hour was then high noon, snow soft and 
walking bad. Na-ta-way had covered several 
miles and done much since he had left his bed 
that morning. His inner man began to crave 
for food, the conditions were favorable, wood 
water and a sunny bank. What could be more 
alluring to a weary man? A bright lire was 
soon burning with the ever welcome tea kettle 
hanging in the blaze, the hunter on his knees in 
front waiting for it to boil. 

Another digression right here. I never saw 
a man make tea, but after chucking in an ample 
quantity of the precious leaves from China, 
would throw in another pinch, either to make 
sure of there being a proper strength in the 
brew or for good luck. Be the reason what it 
may, they all do it. I do it myself. 

Continuing on his march after his mid-day 
lunch, Na-ta-Avay came to a small lake. What 
is it that causes him to stop and cast Irs eyes 
about? The lake is full banks and therefore 
at that season must contain beaver. Yes, there 
stood the lodge on the opposite side and a well 
understood mark leading from the open water 
in front up into the bush. The beaver had come 
out the day before. 

What Indian, or white man for that matter, 



REMARKABLE SUCCESS. 121 

can resist the chance offered to eat beaver meat? 
Na-ta-way looked at the Indians' clock, the sun, 
with a satisfied expression and his mind was 
made up; he would wait the coming ashore to 
feed. A comfortable spot was selected within 
gun shot of the place of debarkation. Here he 
tramped a hole in soft snow and strewed some 
balsam branches on the bottom upon which he 
crouched and waited. 

There was no uncertainty as in the song the 
girl sang, "He cometh not," for he had hardly 
taken up his position before out struggled a 
young beaver and passed up the path leading to 
the young growth of trees. But Na-ta-way knew 
better than to fire at this one. No, the beaver 
passed on and up, giving grunts of anticipation. 
Number two came ashore and ambled inland 
without being molested. Now, however, Na-ta- 
way was all alertness. With his rifle cocked 
and his belt axe handy in front he waited the 
advent of another emblem of Canada. In a 
few minutes out he came to join his brothers 
or sisters who were already feasting on young 
sappy trees. 

-The crack of the rifle echoed far and near in 
the clear, mild atmosphere, but before it died 
away, the Indian stood over the shot beaver and 
barred the path against the frightened return- 
ing ones. The first coming down the hill he shot. 



122 CANADIAN WILDS. 

The whole slaughter was well planned and car- 
ried out. 

Three young beaver make a pretty solid 
lump on a man's back, but a hunter may leave 
moose meat and bear's meat in the bush to a 
chance wolf, but beaver, no! hardly! even if he 
has to make double trips. Na-ta-way had car- 
ried heavy weights slung by a portage strap 
across his forehead from childhood and could 
well support and carry what he now had. 

I well remember that night when he entered 
our kitchen and let slide off his back that mix- 
ture of beaver, mink and bear skin. In four- 
teen hours he had walked about ten miles and 
killed : 1 moose, 1 mink, 1 bear and 3 beaver. 
Verilv this was luck or success. 



CHAPTEK XVI. 

things to avoid. 
Winter. 

Never leave your axe out doors all night. 
Intense cold makes it exceedingly brittle, most 
likely the first knot you put it into will cause a 
gash in the blade and an axe is an essential part 
of a trapper's outfit, and impossible to replace 
when far from settlements. 

Never dry your snowshoes near the fire, but 
plant them some distance away to be dried by 
the frost. The fire acting on the dampness in 
the knitting cooks 1 the fiber of the leather and 
causes the shoe to give out before its proper 
time. 

Never, in very cold weather, carry your gun 
by the barrel; if occasion caused you to fire it 
off, the chances are the barrel will burst at the 
place where your hand heated the iron. 

Never after wringing out your wet mocca- 
sins place them near the fire to dry, but scrape 
out any remaining moisture with the back, of the 
sheathe knife, stuff each shoe with brush and 
hang at back of camp to dry gradually. 

123 



124 CANADIAN WILDS. 

The brush keeps the shoes extended and per- 
mits the heat to permeate to all parts. 

Never put on the same shoe on the same foot 
two days in succession. The shoe will wear 
much longer and retain its shape by interchang- 
ing. 

In wearing moose or deer skin shoes begin 
by wearing them wrong side out until almost 
worn through, then turn, and you have the grain 
side of the leather. Thus your shoe will last al- 
most twice as long. 

Never travel without an extra undershirt 
and a spare pair of socks; with the trunk and 
feet dry and warm there is some chance of 
salvation for a man if he was unfortunate 
enough to break through the ice or obliged to 
travel through the wet in the spring. The days 
may be mild enough but the nights are cold. 

Never cut your night's wood from low 
ground bordering on water. It will cause you 
untold annoyance by continually shooting off 
live coals and sparks all over your blankets. 

In selecting your camping place have your 
fire slightly higher than your bed. Most places, 
(unless on rock), are eaten away by action of 
the fire, and by the time you turn in you will 
have the fire on a level. 

Never consider your work complete until you 
have an armful of fine cut up dry wood or a 



THINGS TO AVOID. 125 

supply of birch bark handy. From excessive 
fatigue you may oversleep and wake thoroughly 
chilled. In such an instance you want a quick 
bright fire, no fumbling about trying to ignite 
some half burnt sticks. 

Never leave any excess of firewood lying on 
the snow to become sodden on the ground and 
covered by the following winter's snow, thus to 
be useless to you or anyone else passing that 
way. A few moments in the morning before 
taking the trail will stand it on end under some 
tree and it is good for future use. 

Never underestimate your wood require- 
ments for the night. It is better, yes, much bet- 
ter, to have a surplus than to turn out before 
daylight to replenish your fire. 

Never, if you are dragging a toboggan or 
sleigh, leave it flat on its track where your day's 
march ends, but turn it on its side, if loaded, or 
stand it up, if empty, and scrape or rub off any 
frost on the bottom or runners. The next day 
it will slide easy, otherwise the empty sleigh 
alone will be a load. 

Never put your game or fish to cook in boil- 
ing water. Place it, in preference, in cold and 
bring to the boil, then let it simmer till done. 

I have seen the Indians on a very cold night, 
when on the trail, make a new fire where we had 
been sitting and spread our brush and blankets 



126 CANADIAN WILDS. 

on the old fire place. The ground being thawed 
out our brush retained considerable warmth till 
morning. 

Never, in the winter, make your camp fire 
directly under a large snow laden tree. The 
heat of the fire will melt the snow and the drop- 
ping water cause much annoyance and discom- 
fort, or high winds may spring up before morn- 
ing and send the snow about your fire and camp. 

Never carry all your supply of matches 
about your person, have a few, even though only 
a half dozen, in some damp-proof article 
amongst your blankets. A very good recepta- 
cle if you have not a water proof box, is an empty 
Pain Killer vial. See that it is thoroughly dry, 
drop in your few matches and cork tightly. 

This is for an emergency and can be car- 
ried about for months or years, and only opened 
under necessity, when perhaps one dry match 
will save your life. 

Never leave your gun loaded in camp! The 
iron draws the dampness and imparts it to the 
cartridges. Next day they may prove slow fire 
or not explode at all. Have your cartridges 
handy if you will, but really there is no neces- 
sity. The days of wolves and savage Indians 
are past and in most parts of the "wild" there 
is nothing to molest man. 

One other axiom I will adduce and not prefix 



THINGS TO AVOID. 127 

it with the negative "Never," because it is not 
always possible to adhere to this principle. 

It is not generally known that the position 
one assumes Avhen making one's bed has a great 
deal to do with getting a restful night's repose. 
When possible lie with your head to the north. 
The magnetic earth currents flow from the 
north, and thus from your head down through 
your body. The tired feeling you had when re- 
tiring has all flowed out through your feet be- 
fore morning. 

This fact may appear absurd to a person not 
giving the subject sufficient thought, but it is on 
the same principle as a person stroking your 
hair downwards. The result is quieting and 
soothing, but if he rubs it the contrary way it 
irritates and is hurtful. 

I have proved the truth of this assertion 
many times during my nights on the trail. I 
have purposely rolled in my blanket with my 
head to the south, and arose the following morn- 
ing, unrested, and my body "broken up." 

The foregoing may be and is rather dis- 
jointed, because I have penned each subject as 
they came to my mind, but the reader may rest 
assured they are worth memorizing and were 
learned by the writer during long years of hard- 
ships. 



128 CANADIAN WILDS. 



Summer. 

Suppose your canoe has been turned over on 
the beach all night, never launch it in the morn- 
ing without first thoroughly examining the bot- 
tom from end to end. If there are rabbits or 
rats about, the place of a greasy hand is enough 
to draw them, and they will gnaw a lot of boat 
for very little grease. 

This might be overlooked in the hurry of get- 
ting away, and the canoe either sink under you 
or sufficient water enter to damage your things. 

Once my chum and I were making our way 
up river with our supplies. Amongst the pro- 
visions was a half barrel of pork. When camp- 
ing the first night we left the pork near the over- 
turned canoe. The rest of our outfit we carried 
up to our camp on the top of the river bank, 
thinking nothing would touch a solid hardwood 
barrel. 

Well, in the grey morning, when we went to 
get water for our coffee we found the staves in 
shooks and the bricks of pork scattered about 
the gravelly beach. Eabbits had cut the hoops 
and the barrel had fallen to pieces. The rest 
was easy to the rabbit — not to us. 

If you are a lone hunter never travel in sum- 
mer without an extra paddle. You may lug this 



THINGS TO AVOID. 129 

about all season and never require it but once, 
but that once you will be glad you have it. 

Often when approaching game it is expedi- 
ent to drop the paddle quietly in the water when 
taking up your gun. In the stillness of the 
wild, the noise of placing the paddle inboard is 
sufficient to scare away the game and the chance 
is lost. With a spare paddle at hand the hun- 
ter can quickly pursue the wounded game or 
paddle back and pick up the dropped paddle. 

If you have a chum a second paddle is not 
necessary, as lie can either forge the canoe ahead 
or back her to where you dropped yours. 

Never talk or make unnecessary noise while 
hunting. Old hunters never do. It is only 
about the camp fire they talk, and even there al- 
ways in a low tone of voice. 

Old hunters communicate to one another all 
that is necessary by a shake of the canoe, a nod 
of the head or motions of the hands. 

When portaging at a carrying place never 
when you get to the other end, put the canoe 
down at once, but let the man in front first scan 
carefully all about each side of the lake or river 
as far as the eye will carry. Something might 
be on the surface, standing in the shallows, or 
in the edge of the bush, which the noise of put- 
ting down the canoe would frighten away. 

9 



130 CANADIAN WILDS. 

If you wish to avoid the dew of the morn- 
ing, camp at the upper end of a carrying place, 
i. e., rapid, but if you wish to have a refreshing 
slumber camp at the foot of the rapid, have your 
head up stream and pointing to the north if pos- 
sible. 

Never push on and camp on the border of 
some small stagnant lake, merely to add a little 
length to your day's trail. Better camp this 
side and have living water for your cooking pur- 
poses. 

If you were hunting in the fall in a beaver 
country and watching to shoot them in the even- 
ing: 

Never, if it is a big lodge, fire at the first or 
even the second beaver that breaks water. If 
you do, good-bye to the others for that night. 
It is better to allow the first and second to swim 
away along shore to their wood-yards unmo- 
lested. The next to make its appearance will 
most likely be one of the old ones. This kill if 
you can, and then paddle slowly in the direction 
the first has taken. The chances are you will 
meet them coming back or see them ashore cut- 
ting wood. 

See that your two or three traps are in good 
order, and leave the lake for your camp before 
darkness sets in. 



THINGS TO AVOID. 131 

Your camp should be half a mile away and 
to the leaward of the beaver lake. 

In the spring of the year beaver begin v to 
swim early in the afternoon and take to their 
lodge late in the morning. In the autumn when 
the nights are long they break water late and 
are not to be seen after sunrise next morning. 

If you see two beaver at one time swimming 
and shoot one, leave it floating on the water. 
The chances are the second one will make a 
short dive, and you want to be ready with your 
gun when he conies up. I have often got one 
with each barrel this way. 

By shooting in the evening and leaving three 
traps set I have cleaned out a lodge of seven 
beaver in an evening and a night, from 4 P. M. 
to 7 A. M. next morning, and this with only a 
poj of ten years old for a companion. 

The hardest part was in packing them and 
my canoe out over five carrying places. But, 
oh ! when the bunch was at the post what recom- 
pense, all those fine, rich furs and the luscious 
and sustaining meat, with a roasted tail now 
and again as a side bite. 

Now penning these lines in my last camp in 
a town of ten thousand inhabitants, how my 
mind longs for one more season in the bush, but, 
alas ! I fear it may never be. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

ANTICOSTA AND ITS FURS. 

The island of Anticosta, lying in the mouth 
of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, runs parallel with 
the main land on its north shore and about 
twenty-five miles distant from it. Notwith- 
standing the close proximity to the continent 
and the straits, some winters blocked with ice 
fields, the martens on this island are peculiar 
and distinct in this manner, that almost with- 
out exception the forepaws and the end of the 
tail are tipped with white hair. 

I traded one year several hundred pelts of 
Anticosta marten and with one or two excep- 
tions they all showed this distinction from those 
we got on the north shore or mainland. I 
found this white ending of extremities even 
amongst the bears and foxes, and in some in- 
stances with the otter. Otherwise the marten 
are as well furred and as rich and deep in color 
as the far-famed Labrador ones. 

Of bears there are on the island both black 
and brown; the latter are of immense size and 
very savage. One skin I got measured seven 

132 



ANTICOSTA AND ITS FUR. 133 

feet broad by nine feet long and showed the 
marks of no fewer than eleven bullet holes in 
his hide. The man from whom I purchased the 
skin told me he met the monster while traveling 
along the sea beach and fired at him. The bear 
dropped, but in a moment arose to his feet and 
rushed for the hunter. Fortunately there was 
a high rock near by, up which the man clamb- 
ered with his gun, out of reach of the infuriated 
beast and from this "Coin de advantage" Ar- 
senault loaded and fired round ounce balls into 
the bear until he was dispatched. 

While on this trip I secured two of the finest 
and purest silver grey fox skins I ever handled. 
It is not generally known that a pure silver fox 
is mucTi rarer than black or black silver. What 
I mean by pure silver is a fox that is silvered 
from the very head right down to the white tip 
of the tail. The majority of so-called silver 
foxes are black from the head to a third of the 
way down the back; a part of the body and 
rump alone being silvered. 

In the Hudson's Bay Company trading posts, 
foxes are graded when purchased under the 
following names : black, black silver, silver grey, 
black cross, dark cross, ordinary cross, (first 
cousin to red) bright red, light red, white. I 
am aware that to make this list complete. blue 



134 CANADIAN WILDS. 

and grey foxes are wanting, but as they are 
only traded in one or two of the Company's 
posts and I was never at either, I will say noth- 
ing about them, but of the above grades and 
colors of foxes I have traded and trapped many. 

A black cross is so very near a silver that it 
is only a savant that can tell the difference. A 
black cross has yellow hairs growing inside the 
ears and a patch of yellow near each fore leg, 
whereas a silver has none. Unscrupulous trap- 
pers very often try to get over these giving- 
away marks by plucking the hairs out of the 
ears and by greasing and smoking the side 
patches. 

The first thing a trader does when a doubt- 
ful skin is offered is to look into the ears; if 
the hairs are wanting, he breathes on his hand 
and gently passes it down over the side. If the 
hand is blackened this is a proof number two 
and the smart "Alec" is found out. 

Coming back to Anticosta; forty years ago 
the privilege of hunting was leased by the then 
owner of the seigniory to a man from Quebec, 
who each autumn repaired to the island with 
four or five men who hunted on shares, Mr. Cor- 
bett, supplying food, traps and ammunition, got 
a certain per cent, of the furs each caught. 

They laid their small schooner up in a she!- 



ANTICOSTA AND ITS FUR. 135 

tered bay and Corbett used to cook and sweep 
the shanty while his men hunted and trapped. 

Wrecks used to occur nearly every year of 
some late lumber-laden sailing vessel and in 
the spring, after the hunt was over, Corbett and 
his men would load their schooner with copper 
and iron from the hulls and sail for Quebec in 
June when the moderate summer winds had 
begun. 

Five or six years ago M. Menier, the French 
chocolate king, purchased the island from the 
Seignorial heirs and has converted it into n 
game reserve. He has cut road, built wharfs 
and made many other improvements and is try- 
ing to acclimate animals that were not found 
on the island, such as moose, Virginia red deer, 
buffalo, beaver, etc. 

A^ resident governor lives on the island the 
year around and has a steamer of a couple of 
hundred tons at his command that plies between 
the island and Quebec, as necessity requires. M. 
Menier, with a part} r of friends, comes from 
France each summer and passes a month on 
the island fishing and shooting. There are three 
salmon rivers, one where the fish are especially 
large and numerous. 

After purchasing the island M. Menier se- 
cured from the Canadian Government the right 



136 CANADIAN WILDS. 

to a three-mile belt of water, so when the owner 
is on "Anticosta" he is actually lord and master 

of all that he surveys.* 

* * * 

In the Forest and Stream of Feb. 9 I have 
read the article written by H. de Puyjalon on 
the pekan or fisher. Mr. de Puyjalon appears 
to me to have attempted writing upon a subject 
in which he was very little versed and with no 
data upon which to base his assertions. As a 
matter of fact, prior to about the year 1860, the 
fisher or pekan was an animal unknown to the 
trappers on the north shore and Labrador, east 
of the Saguenay, and it was only after that year 
that an odd one was trapped in that lower coun- 
try. In fact, when first the fisher made its. 
appearance the Indians had no name for it, but 
after it became better known they adopted the 
Algonquin name it now bears. When an Indian, 
in the early sixties, was fortunate enough to 
have one in his pack he mentioned it as a big 
marten. 

For many years the Saguenay Eiver ap- 
peared to have been the boundary line for 
moose, red deer and pekan, none being known 
on the east side, while fairly numerous on the 
west bank. As the fisher Avas never very plenti- 
ful on the Labrador, and when found was only 
in the wooded part, it is not strange that a per- 



ANTICOSTA AND ITS FUR. 137 

son of Mr. cle Puyjalon's sedentary habits should 
have trapped only two. 

I lived Avithin hearing distance (that is, cou- 
rier's reports) of Mr. de Puyjalon, while that 
gentleman resided on the coast, and apart from 
hearing that he set a fox trap or two about his 
shanty, never heard him mentioned as what we 
would call a trapper. 

In his article he gives -the pekan the credit 
of showing considerable cunning and finesses. 
As a matter of natural history they have no 
more of this than a marten, and will bungle into 
an ordinarily made dead-fall in the same way. 
The only thing to do when fisher are known to 
be about a line of marten traps is to make a' 
larger sized house for him and extra heavy 
weight to keep him down when caught. 

That the fisher decreases in number is quite 
contrary to facts. According to the last London 
sales of mixed furs in September, fisher stood 
at 4,926, in 1893 4,828, and in 1883 4,640, show- 
ing that they have increased slightly. In some 
parts of the country they stand in the returns 
about equal to the marten exported. I remem- 
ber this very plainly, for at the time it struck 
me as peculiar. I was Jn charge of an out-post 
on Lake Superior. Our returns were princi- 
pally beaver, foxes and lynx, very few marten, 
and in that year I had at the close of trade 96 



138 CANADIAN WILDS. 

marten and 96 fisher. This was impressed on 
hit memory as being a strange coincidence, be- 
cause the post I had been previously stationed 
«tt turned out over two thousand marten to eight 
or ten fisher. The prices for fisher in the Cana- 
dian market vary but little and we never have 
fluctuations as in silver foxes and marten. The 
skins are little used in any country except Rus- 
sia and China, where they are used chiefly by 
the rich as coat linings. As they have a tough 
skin, and when prime a deep, rich fur, it is a 
wonder — since they are comparatively few on 
the market — that they do not command a bet- 
ter price. 

The resort of the pekan is principally along 
the mountain ranges, never in the black spruce 
or flat barren country of the table land or to 
the north of it. Their food consists of rabbits, 
partridges, mice, squirrels and fruit when in 
season. When the mountain ash berries are 
plentiful and hang late in the autumn, both the 
fisher and the marten are difficult, if not impos- 
sible, to trap, as there is no meat lure you can 
bait with, that will induce them to leave the 
berries. 

In a year of scarcity of fruits, when the 
fisher has to depend on his own adroitness in 
securing his food, I have read the signs and 



/ ANTICOSTA AND ITS FUR. 139 

seen where one has been very persistent in run- 
ning down a rabbit, the chase being up and 
down, in and out, until bunny was overtaken, 
killed and eaten. 



OHAPTEK XVIII. 

CHISELLING AND SHOOTING BEAVER. 

It is only in the far back country that the 
once plentiful beaver are to be found at the 
present day, and though a description of one 
of the modes the Indians adopt in killing them 
may be of no practical use to the present gen- 
eration of hunters on the fringe of civilization, 
it will at least be interesting to them and re- 
membered by some old-timers. Chiselling, or 
trenching, beaver, as it is sometimes called, is 
yet followed by the interior Indians, and when 
conditions are favorable, is a most expeditious 
way of piling up a whole lodge. 

The writer in his young days has many a 
time accompanied the Indians on these hunts, 
and the description of my last participation in 
this exciting mode of hunting I will endeavor 
to explain to the reader. I found a large lodge 
of beaver in a very small lake, probably a quar- 
ter of a mile long by one-eighth wide. It was 
so late in the fall that it was too near freezing 
to set traps in open water, and the appearance 
of the shore conveyed to my experienced eye 

140 



CHESELLING AND SHOOTING BEAVER. 141 

that it could be chiselled to advantage. I there- 
fore returned to the post and left the beaver 
undisturbed. 

It was fortunate I did so, for the following 
night all the small ponds and lakes in the vicini- 
ty were ice-bound only to open again in six 
months. A few days after an Indian visited 
the post for an additional supply of ammuni- 
tion and snaring twine, and I took the oppor- 
tunity to enlist his services to kill my beaver. 
I offered him two pounds of tea for a day's work 
at the lake. Whether he killed the beaver or 
not, he was sure of the tea. This he agreed to, 
and I immediately put together the necessary 
things so as to make an early start. 

As the lake was only an hour's walk from 
the post we reached it about sunrise, and both 
knowing our business, set to work at once. The 
implements necessary for each man are a belt 
axe, an ordinary socket mortise chisel one and 
a quarter inch broad. This is handled (gener- 
ally at the lake) -with a peeled spruce sapling 
from six to seven feet long, and last but by no 
means least, is a good beaver dog, and almost 
any Indian dog is good for beaver, as they learn 
from the older ones and train themselves. I 
had two at the post and these, of course, accom- 
panied us. The first thing to do is to visit the 
discharge of the lake. If this is dammed a trap 



142 CANADIAN WILDS. 

must be set at the opening where the water es- 
capes. This is the first precaution, so that if 
any beaver during the trenching process tries 
to escape down the creek he must pass over the 
trap and get caught. 

Where the water of the lake and that of the 
creek is of the same level there is consequently 
no dam, and then the creek, at its narrowest 
part, has to be picketed from side to side. This 
is often a laborious job, as pickets have to be 
cut and carried to the creek, a cut three or four 
inches wide made in the ice and then the pickets 
driven down side by side, or very close to each 
other, so the beaver cannot possibly pass. 

This work done to our satisfaction, our next 
point was the lodge itself. This we broke in 
from the top and all the sticks, mud, etc., we 
jammed down in the opening or exit. This is 
done to prevent the beaver returning once they, 
have left the lodge. At several places around 
the lake the beavers have what the Indian call 
"washes." These are burrows they make be- 
neath the surface, generally up under the roots 
of a large tree. They use them for breathing 
places and to retire to if disturbed at the lodge. 
They make these at any favorable spot where 
the conditions are suitable, and the "washes" 
vary in number from three to five up to twice 
that number. 



CHESELLING AND SHOOTING BEAVER. 143 

The dog's share of the work is to travel 
around the lake and scent the beaver under 
the frozen bank. He is trained not to give 
tongue, he merely points and sets his head on 
one side, then the other. Both our dogs are 
now pointing and we hastened over to the spot. 
A hole is chisselled in the ice close to shore and 
a .crooked stick inserted. This stick is cut at 
the commencement of the. hunt, is about seven 
feet long, and has a natural curve, almost as 
much as a half moon. The end of the stick is 
moved about, it slips up under the bank; this 
is the entrance to the "wash." We cut the hole 
in the ice larger and then watch the water. If 
the beavers (or even one) are up in the bank 
there is a perceptible rise and fall of the water 
at the opening. We then set to work to fence 
in the entrance to the "wash" with sticks. This 
done, the ice is. cut away inside the stakes, a 
couple of feet square. 

All is now ready for the test. The Indian 
bares his arm up to the arm pit. He gets down 
on his knees over the hole and watches, while I 
go up a few feet from the bank and drive the 
chisel into the ground. This disturbs the beaver 
and he makes a mad drive to get out to the lake. 
The pickets bring him up, and while he is turn- 
ing about, puzzled and bewildered, the Indian 
dashes his arm into the water and seizins the 



144 CANADIAN WILDS. 

oeaver by the hind leg gives one strong pull 
and lands him over his head. The fall on the 
ice stuns him momentarily, and before he can 
escape the Indian has dealt him a blow with the 
head of his axe. The young ones are generally 
the first killed, as two or three may be together 
in one "wash." The old ones, as a rule, give 
much trouble, as they vacate one "wash" for 
another at the approach of the hunter. , Then 
there is nothing for it but to picket off each 
"wash" as found, and thus reduce the number 
of places for him to resort to. 

A hunter with a practiced eye can tell pretty 
well by the appearance of the shores about a 
beaver lake if the "washes" are few in number 
or numerous and guides himself accordingly. If 
the lake has drained a foot or two since the ice 
took, it is useless to attempt to chisel, as the 
beaver can go ashore under the ice anywhere 
and breathe. In our case all circumstances were 
favorable; the water was full under the ice, 
all over, and the "washes" were very few and 
easily located. 

By three o'clock in the afternoon we had 
the beavers all killed, two old and four young 
ones. We really had five by dinner time, so we 
lit a fire, boiled our kettle and let the last old 
one quiet down a bit while we "ate our lunch. 
We got him at last in the last "wash," and I 



CHESELLING AND SHOOTING BEAVER. 145 

suppose knowing this was his last stand he 

would not attempt to leave the back part of the 

hole no matter how much I poked the chisel in 

about him. So while the Indian kept a close 

and alert watch at the mouth of the "wash," I 

made a large opening at the back and slipped 

in one of the dogs. In a moment beaver and 

dog were both out at the entrance fighting in 

the water. The beaver fastened his terrible 

teeth in the dog's lip. The Indian and I each 

managed to grasp a hind leg, a long pull and out 

came beaver and dog together. We had to force 

his teeth apart after killing him before the dog 

was free. 

* * * 

I mentioned in a previous article that I 
would at some future time tell of the part a 
beaver-dam enacts in the successful shooting of 
the beaver. 

As I said, the beaver has to keep a jealous 
watch on the dam to preserve the proper height 
of the water at their lodge. They make nightly 
visits to see all is well, just as a faithful watch- 
man goes his rounds of the factory over which 
he has charge. 

Any sudden falling of water brings the bea- 
ver down post haste to the dam to repair the 
damage or leak. Often an otter is the cause 
of the trouble, as they sometimes bore a pass- 

10- 



146 CANADIAN WILDS. 

age way under the discharge, thereby letting out 
a large quantity of water in a very short while. 

The Indians, knowing this careful watchful- 
ness of the beaver, use it to his destruction by 
purposely breaking a portion of the dam and 
hiding, await the coming of the little builders, 
shooting them at close range. 

I cannot do better than to describe one of 
these shootings, in which I took part. 

One of the principal things to observe is that 
the wind should be in the proper direction, i. e., 
from the lodge toward the dam. A day coming 
when the condition of the wind was favorable, 
we set off with our double-barrel guns, a tea 
kettle and some grub, and reached the discharge 
about 3 P. M. 

The little pond was brimming full with the 
proper quantity of water, flowing out of the cut 
to insure a regular equality. The Indian stu- 
died all this, looked at the sun, and decided it 
was yet too early to cut the dam, and in the 
meantime we fixed a nice brush cache at dif- 
ferent angles to the dam, wherein we were to 
sit and watch. About four o'clock the Indian 
hacked away at the discharge with a small 
pointed stick, prying several holes under and 
about it, and in a short time the creek below 
the dam became a highly turbulent stream, and 
£hen we retired to our bedded places and waited. 



CHESELLING AND SHOOTING BEAVER. 147 

I might mention that the time of the year 
was about the tenth of October, a time when 
beaver are quite prime, in that north country. 

We had to wait possibly an hour before the 
first beaver made his appearance. It was one 
of the parents, and judging by the speed at 
which he came down the pond, he must have 
been of turbine construction. One thing sure 
he was on a rush message, and wanted to get 
there quick. I saw the Indian's gun barrel move 
slightly, and when the beaver got within close 
distance he pulled on him, and in a few minutes 
the beaver lay awash close to the dam, where 
he was allowed to remain. 

The next one that came in sight was a young 
one, and came my way. He met the same fate. 
The slight current dragged him also close to 
the dam, a few feet from his father or mother, 
as the case might be. 

This double bagging was hardly over when 
another big one came around a point heading 
for the dam as the others had done. This fellow 
proved to be my meat also, and again a pause 
in the shooting. 

The shadows of the evening were fast fall- 
ing and we had almost given up hopes of seeing 
any others, when again we saw a far-off ripple 
of some animal swimming, and it proved to be 
another young one. This one took down the 



148 CANADIAN WILDS. 

shore nearest to the Indian, and beat the water 
at his gun's shot. , 

The sport was becoming quite exciting, and 
I would have had no objection to continuing it 
longer, but the Indian arose and called across 
to me to gather up our beaver, having a large 
and a small one each, a very fair division. 

fie then set to work to repair the damaged 
dam as Avell as he could, and explained to me 
that the remaining ones would finish off the job 
when the fear was off of them. 

The Indian said that amongst his tribe the 
hunters often used this mode of hunting, and 
what beaver was left unkilled they either trapped 
later on or trenched them out when the ice set 
fast. One thing I learned from that afternoon's 
hunt was that it was simple and successful, and 
I used the knowledge several times, in other 
years, to my advantage. 

We had to pack those beaver through four 
miles of trackless bush, and each pack must have 
weighed ninety pound, and, as far as I remem- 
ber, we rested only three times. I mention this 
because I saw in one of the letters that appeared 
in H-T*T, where a man mentions having killed a 
beaver that weighed fifty pounds, which was so 
heavy he had to drag it home. 

I have heard of dragging a deer or hair seal, 
but never of a fur-bearing animal. I wonder 



CHESELLIXG AND SHOOTING BEAVER. 149 

what that man would have thought to see an 
Indian of a hundred and thirty-six pounds 

weight carry four hearer and his bark canoe on 
top. over a three-quarter mile portage without 
resting, and he did not even appear winded at 
the end. The beaver weighed in the neighbor- 
hood of one hundred and eighty pounds, and 
the bark canoe an easy sixty, but then they are 
inured to carrying heavy loads from childhood. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE INDIAN DEVIL. 

My companion and I were sitting late one 
afternoon at a beaver lake, waiting for the sun 
to get near the tree tops before pushing our 
canoe into the lake to watch for beaver. They 
generally break water near the lodge about sun- 
down and swim along shore to cut their food, 
and one has usually a chance of a shot. 

All at once we heard back in the bush a 
cracking and breaking of branches, readily un- 
derstood as done by a large animal running 
through the underbrush at a high rate of speed. 
The noises came nearer and nearer, a little off 
to our right, and I grasped my double-barreled 
gun which lay beside me and waited events. 

A few moments after we saAv a large caribou 
break cover about one hundred yards to the 
right and spring into the lake. But what was 
that black object clinging to his neck? Surely 
some animal! 

The caribou struck out as fast as it could 
swim, heading for the further shore, and we 
jumped into our canoe and gave pursuit. The 

150 



THE INDIAN DEVIL. 151 

keen eyes of the animal on the caribou's neck 
having detected us, it relinquished its hold, 
dropped off into the water and turned for the 
shore the caribou had left. 

The canoe was immediately headed to cut 
off his retreat, and when within proper distance 
I shot it with one barrel and left it there dead 
on the surface of the lake, while we continued 
on our chase. 

This diversion had taken our attention from 
the caribou, but now, when we had resumed the 
chase, we found the animal was getting through 
the water very slowly, and as we were paddling 
in its wake, we perceived the water at each side 
of the canoe was bloody. By the time we 
reached the caribou it was dead. 

On examination we found the jugular vein 
had been cut by the fierce animal on its back, 
and it had bled to death, fleeing with what 
strength it had to the last drop of the poor 
thing's blood. 

We threw a string over its horns and towed 
it back to the portage, picking up in passing our 
floating black animal, which proved to be a very 
large wolverine, carcajo or Indian devil, the 
beast going under all of these names with hunt- 
ers and traders. 

The carcajo, when he loads for deer, goes 
down to one of their runways, or on a road lead- 



152 CANADIAN WILDS. 

ing to a salt lick. He climbs a tree and gets 
out on some branch overhanging the track. 
Here he flattens himself ont and waits. Yes, he 
is a record waiter. He can give points to even 
the girl who is waiting and watching. 

Time is no object to him; his inwards may 
be shriveling up for want of food, but there he re- 
mains. Once he has taken up that position noth- 
ing but a deer will make him show the least sign 
of life. He is to all intents a part of the tree 
limb, and the knowledge that all things "come 
to him who waits" is strongly fixed in his devil 
brain. 

The deer passes, he drops on to him like a 
rock. Should he strike too far back, his cruel 
claws grip his way up toward tlie neck, and 
there he settles himself, a fixture, and cuts away 
at the large veins till the poor deer bleeds to 
death. 

As soon as the deer feels this foreign weight 
on his back the cruel teeth cutting into him, he 
at once runs into and through the thickest part 
of the forest trying to rub the incubus off his 
back. But the carcajo has the tenacity of the 
bulldog, and his own skin would be ripped and 
lacerated before he would let go his hold. 

The deer, realizing this mad rush through 
the bush is useless, makes for the nearest water 
in the hope that this will rid him of his enemy. 



THE INDIAN DEVIL. 153 

But vain hope, the wolverine is there to stop, 
and only opens his jaws when the deer is dead, 
or, as in my instance, through fear for his per- 
sonal safety. 

Our beaver hunt was spoilt for that night, 
so we moved back on the trail and camped. 
There we passed our time drying the deer's 

meat and skinning the Indian devil. 
* * * 

The amount of destructiveness contained in 
a full grown wolverine, or, as he is sometimes 
called, carcajo and Indian devil, is something 
past belief to any one who has not lived in the 
country in which they resort. The tales told by 
hunters and lumbermen of the doings of this 
strong and able beast would fill pages. Some of 
these, like fish stories, may be seasoned by a 
pinch of salt, therefore I will only jot down a 
few that I experienced personally in my trap- 
ping days. 

Hunger cannot always be adduced as a rea- 
son for their thieving propensities, inasmuch as 
they will steal martens, rabbits and partridges 
out of traps and snares when they are full to 
repletion just out of pure cussedness, as it were, 
to make the owner of the traps and snares to use 
unseeming language. 

When once a wolverine gets on a line of 
deadfalls the trapper has either to abandon his 



154 CANADIAN WILDS. 

traps and seek new fields, or kill the mischiev- 
ous animal, for even should the line be ten miles 
long the Indian Devil will destroy or put out of 
order eacli trap to the very end., Their favor- 
ite plan is to tear out the back of the trap. If 
they find a marten caught and they are not hun- 
gry, they will carry it off at right angles to the 
trail and bury it in the snow, or climb a tree 
and deposit it on a cross branch. I have found 
no fewer than three martens when visiting my 
trap road a day after the wolverine had passed. 

Once when chum and I were off for a couple 
of nights from our main camp, on our return we 
missed a toboggan from in front of the shanty 
door. This was passing strange as no Indians 
were in the vicinity, nor had passed our way. 
Hunt as Ave did in every conceivable place did 
not produce the missing sled. It was only two 
years after when camping in the same place and 
felling a dry spruce for firewood that the to- 
boggan and tree came to earth together. The 
mystery was solved, a wolverine had drawn it 
up in the top branches of the tree and left it. 

I remember a laughable occurrence that took 
place once. Chum and I had a small log shanty 
on the edge of a big lake. This was our head- 
quarters; Eadiating from the shanty we had 
lines of traps to the four points of the compass 
and we often slept out a night, visiting and 



THE INDIAN DEVIL. 155 

cleaning out the traps. Each used to take a 
line end, each slep for that night solitary in the 
wilds. 

On our return from one of our trips we met 
on the edge of the clearing and when we got to 
our shanty we noticed things looked strange and 
yet we could not tell for a moment what it was. 
On opening the door things looked stranger 
still, for on the floor was a mixture of mostly all 
our belongings, flour, matches, moccasins, to- 
bacco, soap and numerous other things and 
sifted over all was ashes. 

One would think a hurricane had come down 
the chimney and blown everything loose, but we 
knew better. Some animal must have done this 
devastation and we could call that animal by 
his right name by reading his work. Yes, a 
wolverine had been there and we fell to calling 
him some appropriate names and as we went 
along, we invented other names which our cuss 
vocabulary did not possess. 

During a momentary lull in our burst of 
passion, we heard a slight scratching under the 
table and there we found the worker of all the 
mischief. A blow of the axe finished him then 
and there and he was pulled out into the light. 
Our surprise was great to find most of the hair 
on his head singed off and he was blind in both 



156 CANADIAN WILDS. 

eyes. Then we set to work to read the signs 
how it happened. 

We found by our deduction that in the first 
place he had clambored up on to the roof and 
from there had entered by the wide mouthed 
chimney. Once in the shanty he had set to 
work to examine and investigate everything 
about, each in turn to be cast from him on the 
floor. 

The very last thing to attract his attention 
was my chum's powder horn. It was one of 
those old-fashioned cow horns with a plug in the 
small end. There was at the time nearly half 
a pound of sun powder in it. With this bright 
and shining article "carajou" started to clambor 
up and out thru the chimney. 

Alas! he held the butt end upwards. By 
dryness, I suppose, the plug dropped out and a 
fine stream of powder found its way to the cen- 
ter of our fireplace where a few coals must have 
yet kept fire. A flame shot up, an explosion 
followed, and down came the frightened, blinded 
beast. No doubt from agony and fear he 
crawled under the table where we found him 
and put an end to his misery. 

Their legs are very strong and muscuclar 
and I have known them to break out of even a 
No. 4 Newhouse. When they will take bait a 
pretty sure way to get them is by "setting a 



THE INDIAN DEVIL. 157 

gun," but this is dangerous work as some 
stranger might pass that way, and even to the 
person setting the gun, great care must be used. 
As they are very seldom famished and there- 
fore will not take bait, about the only thing for 
the trapper to do is to give him the "right of 
way," and the hunter to move to some other 
part of the country for a month or so. We call 
them the Indian Devil because he inhabits the 
Indian country, but the Indians themselves call 
them "Bad Dog," this being the lowest and 
meanest name their language supplies. 



CHAPTER XX. 

A TAME SEAL. 

Many years ago, before the great River Moi- 
sie was resorted to by cod fishermen and others, 
the harbor seals used to come up the stream 
in great numbers for the purpose of bringing 
forth their young in its quiet upper pools. After 
staying with their young for a couple of weeks, 
the mother seals would return down the river, 
and a few days later the little baby seals would 
drift down with the current and be carried out 
to sea, there to hunt and grow big, and in their 
turn become father and mother seals and visit 
their native river. 

Many a calm evening I have stood on the 
gallery outside the house and listened to the 
infant-like cry of the poor little seals as they 
drifted on the river past the post. One evening, 
toward the end of "the run" we heard one cry- 
ing in a most pitiful and heart-rending way. 
Every now and then we could see the snow-white 
mite as he floated on the surface near mid- 
stream. 

I got a large salmon scoop and joined the 
man on the beach. We waited till the seal had 

15a 



A TAME SEAL. 159 

floated past us, then quietly pushed out the 
boat. The man headed obliquely down stream 
to come up with the baby from behind, while I 
took a position in the bow, ready to. land it in 
the boat. In a few minutes we were up to him. 
The poor little deserted fellow was pawing about 
in the water much after the manner of a blind 
puppy and uttering plaintiff cries, startlingly 
like a real baby. I skipped the scoop well under 
him, and in a moment he was safely landed in 
the bottom of the boat. 

I fixed up an extemporary feeding bottle, 
made of a piece of rubber tubing, a cork and an 
empty soda water bottle, which we filled with 
some nice warm milk. We got him comfortable 
on a sheepskin alongside the kitchen stove, and 
with a little instruction he very soon knew how 
to work his end of the tube. The warmth of 
the stove and the bottle of milk very quickly 
sent him into sweet forgetfulness. 

My first intention was to keep him only a 
few days, until he got a little larger and 
stronger, and then let him continue his journey 
to the sea. But the little fellow became such 
a pet and evidently liked his surroundings so 
well that it would have been heartless in the 
extreme to send him away ; so Jack, as the cook 
christened him, became one of the family, and 
grew and waxed strong, and followed me about 



160 CANADIAN WILDS. 

between the buildings with his flopping gait in 
a most ridiculous manner. 

In September, numbers of fine sea trout used 
to come in the river each tide and go out with 
the ebb. We placed a stand of old useless sal- 
mon nets near the last sand point to create a 
back-water, from which to fly-fish. Jack used 
to accompany me on these fishing tours, and he 
very soon came to understand what my whip- 
ping the water was for. 

One day he wabbled down to the very edge 
of the river, gazed up and down and across the 
water, and the next instant dived in, with a 
greasy, sliding motion. The waters closed over 
him, and I paused in my pastime to see what 
would happen next. I looked about in all direc- 
tions for Jack, but not a ripple disturbed the 
placid waters. He could not have been meshed 
in the folds of the net, because I would have 
seen the floats vibrate. So I stood there pon- 
dering, my thoughts partly perplexed and partly 
sorrowful for the possible loss of our pet. 

All at once I heard heavy breathing almost 
at my* feet, and looking down, there was Jack 
with a fine 3^ lb. sea trout crossAvays in his 
mouth, which, on my calling his name, he depos- 
ited at my feet. Then you may be sure I petted 
the dear young fellow, and he seemed to under- 
stand that what he had done was appreciated 



A TAME SEAL. 161 

by his master, for after rolling himself for a 
«few moments on the sand he made another dive, 
and another, and another, always with the same 
successful results, and the best part of his fish- 
ing was that he only selected the largest and 
fattest fish. We went home, both very proud 
in our own way — Jack for having been made so 
much of, and I because of the useful accomplish- 
ment of my pet. 

As long as the run of fish continued, Jack 
and I used to resort each day to the eddy. He 
brought the fish ashore and I put them in the 
basket. What we could not consume at the 
house, the cook salted for winter use. Yes, the 
winter was coming on, and the thought occurred 
to me several times what we would do with 
Jack. Jack, however, made no attempt to take 
his freedom and forsake us. On the contrary, 
he manifested greater affection for us all, and, 
as the days became shorter and the nights 
colder and longer in that northern latitude, he 
used ta sleep for many hours on a stretch, hud- 
dled up with the dogs in the kitchen, only going 
out of doors for an occasional slide in the snow 
once or twice during the course of each day. 

Even the long winter of the North comes 
to an end in time, and once again we had open 
water; the last-bound river was again free from 

11 



162 CANADIAN WILDS. 

ice, and Jack used to take long swims, but he 
always came back. Finally the run of salmon 
struck the river, and I took Jack down to the 
bight of the sandbars to fly him at bigger game 
than the trout. He made one or two dives and 
came ashore empty-mouthed. He saw there 
were no caresses for Jack, so he tried again. 

This time his efforts "were crowned with suc- 
cess, for he landed with a 12 lb. salmon strug- 
gling in his strong jaws. He received my pal- 
ing and expressions of satisfaction with un- 
bounded joy and seemed to know he had done 
something to be proud of, for he ambled up the 
sandbank and slid down to the water several 
times in rapid succession. 

Soon it was the season for the seals to enter 
the river as in past years, and the Indians were 
shooting them from their canoes whenever they 
had a chance. Juck used to go so far afield now, 
probably trying to find the mother that had so 
shamefully deserted him last year, that we 
feared he might be shot by the Indians by mis- 
take ; so we tied a piece of blue worsted garter- 
ing about his neck to distinguish him from the 
other seals. But alas for the poor Knight of 
the Garter. One day Jack was out among the 
other seals off the mouth of the river, and in 
some way*the bine garter must have been de- 
tached from his neck, for an Indian shot him. 



A TAME SEAL. 163 

The man brought him ashore and told us 
of the mishap. As soon as he handled him to 
put him in the canoe, he knew at once from the 
roughness of his coat it was poor Jack. And 
thus ended our intelligent and useful pet. 

We buried him near the flagstaff and put 
up a board bearing the inscription "Jack." 



Seeing a small shark brought ashore the 
other day by one of the salmon fishermen, who 
had found it rolled up in his net, put me 
in mind of an exciting adventure I had 
many years ago. Both at the east, as well 
as the west side of the mouth of the great 
River Moisie, sand banks run out to sea 
for a distance of two or three miles. These ,are 
covered at high tide, but being of almost a uni- 
form height, the falling tide runs off of them 
in a very short space of time, and leaves them 
dry with the exception of some odd places where 
pools of water remain. The banks are dry the 
last two hours of the ebb and the first two hours 
of the flood tide. 

The great river continually deposits on these 
sands such quantities of vegetable matter, that 
they are a resort for many kinds of small fishes ; 
and numerous waterfowl come there at certain 
stages of the tide to feed on the fish. 



164 CANADIAN WILDS. 

I was only about eighteen at the time, and 
had gone out in a birch-bark canoe to shoot 
ducks on the banks. My companion, an Indian 
boy, even younger than myself in years, but sev- 
eral times older in experience, was to steer the 
canoe. The last words his father said to us 
before feaving, were, "Don't go too far out, or 
the 'Ma-thcie-ne-mak' will cut your canoe and 
eat you." 

The sea that morning was as calm as a pond, 
and perfectly glassy from the strong May sun 
striking straight down on it. We had been out 
for a couple of hours, and had had pretty fair 
luck with sea-ducks and loons, and were just 
about starting for the shore before the tide left 
us dry on the banks. If such a thing had hap- 
pened, it would have entailed on us the labor 
of carrying our canoe a mile or so to the beach, 
over soft yielding sand. 

"We better go," the boy was saying when his 
words were cut short in his mouth. With the 
remains of that breath he screeched "Ma-tchie- 
ne-mak!" and started to paddle like one pos- 
sessed. I admit that his fright was infectious, 
and coupled with the dread name of shark, it 
so quickened my stroke, that Hanlon's sixty-a- 
minute were very slow compared to the way I 
worked my paddle. I have read, and heard 
from old whalesmen, that as long as one kept the 



A TAME SEAL. ' 165 

water churned up, there was no danger of the 
shark getting in his work. Twice the boy called 
out, "There he is!" Once I caught a glimpse of 
the monster a few yards off on our port beam, 
heading to the shore also, but evidently watch- 
ing for a chance to attack us. 

The tide was now running put, and conse- 
quently the more we neared the shore, the 
shoaler the water got. The shark had not 
stopped to consider this in his mad rush to 
catch us. At last our canoe grounded on the 
sands and we looked back with relief at our nar- 
row escape. But, ah ! what is that about a cou- 
ple of acres astern, surely not the shark! But 
it was, and he was floundering about in shal- 
low water, in one of the pools, and every min- 
ute the water was getting less. "Hoop-la ! we will 
now hunt the shark," I said to little Moses, as 
I started off toward him over the now dry sands. 

Yes, there he was, the great, ugly beast, flop- 
ping about in a basin surrounded by banks, out 
of which it was impossible for him to escape. 
From the shore the boy's father and one of c my 
men saw what was going on and came out with 
a handful of bullets and their guns. In the 
meantime I was employing the time with good 
results, by pouring into the shark charge after 
charge of AAA shot at close range. 

By the time the men reached us the fish was 



166 CANADIAN WILDS. 

pretty sick, and apart from snapping his im- 
mense jaws, was lying perfectly still. The first 
bullet from a distance of ten feet put an end 
to him. When the tide came in again we towed 
him into the river and cut him up and salted 
the chunks in barrels to feed the dogs the next 
winter. From the liver we rendered out three 
gallons of oil as clear as water. This of itself 
was of value to us the next winter in our lamps, 
it gave a clear light and emitted no smoke. 
Those were the days before coal oil came into 
general use. Our only lights at the post were 
^lome-made tallow candles, or a cotton rag from 
a tin spout fed by seal-oil. This, combined with 
the burning rag, gave off a heavy, dense, black 
smoke, which was, if not injurious, very un- 
pleasant to inhale during the long winter even- 
ings. The shark-oil being so much superior, I 
kept it for my own private lamps, and the teeth 
ornamented the mantlepiece. 



CHAPTEE XXI. 

THE CAKE OF BLISTERED FEET. 

Much suffering and discomfort are experi- 
enced by the novice on snowskoe tramps by the 
want of knowledge as to how to care for and 
protect the feet from blistering. 

• The toes are the parts that suffer most from 
the friction of the cross snowshoe strings that 
are continually see-sawing the front part of the 
moccasin, and many, from an erroneous idea of 
cause and effect, pile on extra socks/ thinking 
thereby to prevent the blistering by the thick- 
ness of their foot padding. 

During my first years in the Hudson Bay 
service I suffered like any other new "hitter" of 
the long trail, but once started on the tramp 
there was no giving in. Places being hundreds 
of miles apart, there were no houses nor any 
place to stop and say, "I can go no further." 
On a journey of seven, eight or ten days, we took 
probably one day's extra provisions, but no 
more, therefore be the back lame through the 
heavy bundle it had to support day after day, 
or our every toe blistered to the bone, walk on 

167 



168 CANADIAN WILDS. 

we must and did. I have often seen the blood 
appear on my moccasins, working its Avay 
through three or four pairs of socks and become 
so dried and caked that before the shoes could 
be removed at the night's camp-fire, warm wa- 
ter had to be poured freely upon the moccasin 
to release the foot. 

The agony at such times was past explain- 
ing. It Avas quite a work to patch up each sep- 
arate toe with balsam gum and rag before turn- 
ing in for the night, and yet stiff, swollen and 
sore, these poor feet had to have the large heavy 
snowshoes suspended to them next morning and 
the weary tramp continued as on the previous 
day. 

Our guides, the Indians, did not suffer, as 
their feet were hardened from childhood, and as 
an Indian never gives advice nor offers to re- 
lieve his companion's load without being asked, 
we, the unfortunate greenhorns, were compelled 
to trudge on in the wake of our pace-maker as 
well as we could. 

Of course I tried by all manner of changes 
in footwear to alleviate the trouble by taking 
off some thickness of socks and by putting on 
extra ones, all to no avail. Trip after trip, and 
year after year, I suffered with cut toes and 
blistered feet. By good fortune, I think it was 
my fifth year in the country, I was ordered from 



THE CARE OF BLISTERED FEET. 169 

St.. Lawrence posts to meet a winter packet 
party from Hudson's Bay. A certain lake on 
the divide was arranged for in the autumn as 
the meeting place of the two parties. The 
packeters from Hudson's Bay were to leave on 
the 3d of January and had a journey ahead of 
them of 325 miles. My party, two Indians and 
self, left on the 6th of January, having 55 miles 
less to travel, or 270 miles. Our day's tramps 
were so similar in length that we arrived at the 
rendezvous within four hours of each- other. 

One of the party from the bay was a Scotch 
half-breed,, and from him, for the first time, I 
learned the art of caring properly for the feet. 
He made me cast aside all my woolen knitted 
socks, and out of his abundance he supplied me 
with smoked fawn-skin ^socks, ankle high, made 
in the fashion of a moccasin, only with no tops 
or welts of seams. The top and bottom pieces 
of leather were herring-boned together, a slit 
was made in the top half to insert the foot and 
this was put on the bare foot. On top of this 
two other shoe socks, made of duffie or blanket- 
ing, were placed and the moose skin moccasin 
over all, the leather top of which was tied about 
the naked ankle. 

I ventured to opine that I would possibly be 
cold there, or freeze, but my new friend told 
me the object was to keep the feet from over 



170 CANADIAN WILDS. 

heating. "And this and the knitted socks is the 
cause of all your suffering." 

"Now listen to me/' he went on; a at every 
noon day fire, or in fact any time a lengthened 
halt is called, sit on the brush before the fire 
and take off both moccasins and all your socks, 
turn them inside out and beat them on a stick 
or the brush to take out all the creases the feet 
have made. Let them cool wrong side out and 
while this is taking place, have your feet also 
cooling. Let them become thoroughly cold be- 
fore replacing your socks and shoes and when 
doing this put those that were on the right foot 
on to the left, and vice versa. This affords a 
wonderful relief to the tired feet and you re- 
sume the journey with a rested feeling. At 
night, after the last pipe is smoked and you are 
about turning in to get what sleep you can with 
no roof to cover you but the far-off heavens, 
then turn up your pants to the knee and jump, 
bare-footed and bare-legged into the nearby 
snow and stand in it until you can bear it no 
longer, then stand near the blazing camp-fire 
and Avith a coarse towel, or bag, rub the legs and 
feet well until the blood is tingling, and the 
color of your lower extremities resembles a 
boiled lobster, and my word for it, you will rest 
better, sleep sounder and arise refreshed — • 
what you never enjoyed before," 



THE CARE OF BLISTERED FEET. . 171 

Fitted out as I was and following his advice 
of the snow bath, I made the return journey 
with ease and pleasure. I made long tramps for 
twenty years following and never again was I 
troubled by either blisters or cut feet. Even 
making short trips about the post hunting, I 
never allowed a knitted sock near my feet. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

DEER-SICKNESS. 

The Indian term "deer-sickness" is in reality 
a misnomer, as it is not the deer that is sick but 
the party "following its tracks. The idea of 
writing this article came to me by reading 
"Scent Glands of the Deer," which appeared in 
Forest and Stream of May 13, and I remem- 
bered how I had the deer-sickness thirty-eight 
years ago. 

There are many surprises for a tenderfoot or 
'greenhorn in the wild, but the name given to 
one of these very-much-to-be-pitied parties in 
the bush country from the Labrador to Lake Su- 
perior is mangers du lard. This is the universal 
cognomen by which a stranger in the north 
country is known. I found by tracing back that 
this soubriquet was first given by the French 
courriers du hois to a new hand entering the 
back country for the first time. 

-It is said that in those early days the French 
youths, from which new hands were recruited, 
lived at home on very scanty food, and when 
they got away working for the fur company, 

172 



DEER-SICKNESS. 173 

where pork was, comparatively, in abundance, 
the} 7 let their young appetites loose and ate the, 
flesh of swine in prodigious quantities, whereby 
they became known as mangers du lard, i. e. ? 
pork eaters, and this denoted a stranger or 
greenhorn, the tenderfoot of the Western prai- 
rie. 

I was somewhat of a greenhorn myself and 
suffered thereby by catching the deer-sickness. 
Like a good many other bad knocks that a be- 
ginner has to endure, this bit of sickness had 
an abiding effect on me and was never repeated. 

My experience came about in this wise. I 
had accompanied a family of Indians to a deer 
battue, and after the general slaughter was over 
I was allotted the duty of following up a 
wounded deer ; by the word deer I mean a wood 
caribou. 

This particular buck had been shot at close 
quarters, the ball going clear through its stom- 
ach. While the shot had the effect of bowling 
the deer over it had not touched a vital spot, 
and during the excitement of the other shoot- 
ing the animal got up and traveled away unob- 
served. The snow was pretty deep, neverthe- 
less the further the deer went the better he ap- 
peared to get along. When this fact became 
evident to me, who was following his track, lit- 
erally with my nose to the snow, I put on a 



174 CANADIAN WILDS. 

greater spurt to try and end the jig. The deer 
by this time had become cognizant of being fol- 
lowed and he also increased his pace. 

I now became aware of a weakness in my 
limbs, a nauseating smell in my nostrils and a 
faint and giddy sensation in my head. This 
uncomfortable feeling grew worse, and at last 
to save myself from falling I had to lean against 
a tree and wipe my brow with a handful of snow. 

This had a momentary good effect. I saw 
clearly once more and pushing ahead redoubled 
my efforts to come within shooting distance of 
my deer. But I had not gone far before I felt a 
relapse coming and in a few moments I was in 
worse distress than ever. The last I remember 
was seeing a whirl of trees going around me. It 
was the last conscious moment before I fainted 
dead away and fell in my tracks in the snow. 

Luckily the chief had sent his two boys to 
follow me up, not that he anticipated this end- 
ing, but for the purpose of skinning and cutting 
up the deer. It was providential he did, for 
otherwise I would never have awakened in this 
world. As it was, the cold had thoroughly pene- 
trated my body and it was only after drinking 
a quart or two of hot tea that circulation re- 
sumed its functions. 

After I had come around to the youth's sat- 
isfaction the eldest one started off after the 



DEER-SICKNESS. 175 

cause of all my trouble, leaving his younger 
brother to replenish the fire and attend to my 
wants. The elder boy returned after an hour 
or two, having killed the deer, the proof, the 
split heart tucked in his belt. Darkness was 
then setting in, but the boys made ready to 
start for camp. What had taken me hours of 
toil to cover, they passed over in a very short 
time; in fact, we only saw my trail once or 
twice on the way out to the lake. 

That night, after supper the chief told me. of 
the '"deer-sickness," and warned me against per- 
sistently following the trail. He continued and 
told how the Indians did and in after years I 
saw their mode and practiced it myself. He ex- 
plained to be that a pungent odor exuded from 
the deer's hoofs when they were pursued and 
it was this that caused my weakness and dis- 
tress. 

The Indians in following deer cut the trail 
once in a while merely to make sure they are 
going in the right direction and to ascertain the 
freshness of the tracks. This is done with a two- 
fold purpose, first to avoid the odor from the 
fresh tracks and secondly to run or walk in the 
most open parts of the forest. Moose, caribou, 
and deer when fleeing from an enemy invariably 
pass through the thickest bush, because the 
snow is shallower under thick, branchy trees 



176 CANADIAN WILDS. 

than in the open, therefore the Indian walks 
a spell on the right hand side of the trail, then 
crosses over and passes on the left. 

From the topography of the country the 
Indian has a pretty good idea of the trend of the 
caribou's course, and the cutting of the trail 
from time to time is only to assure himself that 
he is correct in his surmise, and to judge by the 
tracks how near he is to the quarry. He there- 
by passes through the clearest country, has the 
best walking and escapes the nauseous effluvia 
emitted from the animals' hoofs. 



It falls to us who live in the country the year 
round to hear amusing stories from the guides 
of their experiences with the "tenderfeet" that 
visit the north country during the open season. 
One that shoAved the cuteness of the guide was 
told me shortly ago by the man himself. 

Dr. S — r— came to Eoberval with the ex- 
pressed wish of taking home a caribou head of 
his own killing. He engaged George Skene as 
man of all work, and Old Bazil, the noted guide 
and successful hunter. 

Although it is not customary for guides to 
take their guns when out with gentleman sports- 
men, yet Old Bazil was an exception, as he al- 
ways insisted on taking his. Around the camp- 



DEER-SICKNESS. 177 

fire Dr. S spoke of his great wish to kill a 

caribou. 

"Now," he said to old Bazil, "You bring me 
up close to one and I kill it, I'll give you a bonus 
of $10." 

Several times next day during the still-hunt 
old Bazil would leave the doctor to await his 
return, while he would go forward reconnoiter- 
ing carefully so there might be no mistake. At 
last he came back with the glad tidings to the 
doctor, that he had seen two caribou not far in 
advance of where they now were. 

When it got to sneaking after Bazil through 
the last hundred yards to the feAV trees at the 
extreme edge of the forest, the doctor's heart 
was beating with such thumps that he thought 
the noise would start the game. The doctor at 
last reached the guide in the fringe of trees. 
Bazil told him that one of the deer was stand- 
ing up, broadside on, while a little to the right 
was the second one lying down. The standing 
one being the larger of the two, and the only one 
having horns, was for the doctor to shoot, while 
the guide would take a pot : shot at the other. 
The doctor flattened out on his stomach and 
wriggled a few feet further, saw the deer 
through the branches, took aim and waited for 
Bazil to count the agreed one, two, three. 

12 



178 CANADIAN WILDS. 

Bazil argued with himself that from the un- 
certain way the doctor's gun was wabbling about 
there were several hundred chances to one 
against his hitting the deer, and as a conse- 
quence, he would be minus his bonus. 

So he employed a ruse. He counted the 
agreed signal to fire, but instead of firing at 
the one lying down, he drew a bead on the doc« 
tor's, and, of course, killed it. 

At the report of the guns the caribou on 
the ground sprang up, and old Bazil, with con- 
summate prevarication, said, "Oh! I missed it!" 
Aimed again, let go the other barrel, and killed 
this one also. 

The doctor was wild with delight at his suc- 
cessful first shot, and expressed in many Avords 
his pleasure to old Bazil, avIio took it all in 
without a blush. 

The old guide, who was standing up back of 
where the doctor fired, had taken no chance of 
missing with his smooth bore, but fired point 
blank at the deer's fore quarters. There Avas 
found on examination a frightful wound, and 
smashed bone; but the doctor Avas not versed 
enough in woodcraft to distinguish if this had 
been caused by a round bullet, and not the con- 
ical one from his own rifle. 

The doctor was not a pot-hunter; he had 
what he came for, and had got it in almost rec- 



DEER-SICKNESS. 179 

ord time, and was satisfied, so he fished for 
brook trout while Bazil carefully prepared the 
head for transportation and dried the meat for 
his own family. Then they journeyed back to 
Roberval, where the men were paid off, Bazil 
receiving a bright $10 gold piece as promised 
over and above his wages. 

The doctor no doubt has that head, beauti- 
fully gotten up, hanging over his sideboard, and 
points to it with pride to his guests, saying, "I 
killed that head back of Kis-ki-sink, in Canada." 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

A CASE OF NERVE. 

In the far interior where flour is scarce and 
our living consists of either fish or flesh, both 
of which we have to get when we can and how 
we can, the game laws are a dead letter. Nets 
were always in the water the year round and no 
one moved from the posts without a gun. Fish 
and potatoes were our staple diet and were it 
not for the abundance of the former we could 
never have lived in the country. Lakes were all 
about us and when one was fished out we moved 
our nets to another. 

Flesh, however, could not always be got, and 
when the chance offered we killed, in season or 
out. Nothing, however, was wasted. Should 
we shoot a deer or moose in summer, the sur- 
plus over what we could consume in a day or 
two was either jerked and dried or salted. 
Many a time have my men had to visit our nets 
a mile or two off to get wherewith for our break- 
fast. If successful the fish had then to be 
cleaned and cooked before we broke our fast. 
Such being our hard battle for life I may be ex- 
cused for the following story : 

180 



A CASE OF NERVE. 181 

An Indian came in late one afternoon from 
his hunting grounds at the south to get his 
spring ammunition. It was about the middle 
of April and there was at the time a hard crust 
on the snow. He told us that on the way he had 
seen cuttings of a very big bull moose and he 
was sure he Avas on the top of a mountain near 
by where he had noticed the cuttings. He had no 
gun and besides the moose was useless to him so 
far from his camp being four or five miles from 
our post. Now he continued if you want to 
have him you can come along with me in the 
morning and you will surely kill him. He can't 
get away with the crust. The Indian was so 
sure of our success that he told me to take my 
two men with sleds to bring home the meat and 
hide. 

As it was all ice walking except one short 
portage to the foot of the range of mountains 
he named, we decided to leave the post an hour 
or so before daylight so as to be there at the 
earliest possible moment. Our preparations 
were soon made and we took a little sleep 
dressed as we were and then started. We took 
two little partridge curs to head off the moose 
and keep him amused until I could catch up 
and shoot. 

The hunt was going to be such a dead sure 
result that mine was the gun in the party. It 



182 CANADIAN WILDS. 

was a smooth bore H. B. and carried bullets 28 
to the pound. We had a cup of tea and a bite 
of galette at the foot of the mountain and left 
our sleds there together with the Indian's bun- 
dle of ammunition, tea, tobacco, etc., he had 
traded at the post. My men each carried one of 
the dogs in a bag to let go at the proper mo- 
ment. As the Indian proposed in the first place 
to still hunt the bull, he reasoned that it being 
yet so early perhaps I would get a shot when he 
jumped up from his bed of the night. 

We had to wear snow shoes in the green 
bush as the crust was not sufficiently strong to 
support a man without them. We whipped 
strips of old rags about the frames to deaden the 
noise when walking on the hard snow. The In- 
dian led off putting down each foot with the ut- 
most care and I followed gun in hand the men 
being told to keep an acre or two behind us. 
The ascent was gradual and pretty free from un- 
dergrowth. We were getting near the summit 
when all at once the Indian called out, "he's 
off." After the stillness of our procedure these 
words were quite startling. The men heard him 
and hurried forward to us. The dogs were 
emptied out, they caught the tainted air in a mo- 
ment and away they ran. 

This was the first time I knew of an Indian's 
acute sense of smell, and after, when I came to 



A CASE OF NERVE. 183 

consider it, cou]d not think otherwise than that 
it was wonderful. From the place where we 
stood when he said, "The moose is away," was 
fully two acres to his lair, so it was impossible 
he could have seen or heard him go. In fact, 
he told me he smelt him when he sprang up. 
This I disbelieved at the time, but in after years 
had many instances that could not be doubted. 
Already the dogs were giving tongue down the 
descent on the other side and as they were bark- 
ing apparently in the same place the moose was 
said to be at a standstill. The face of the moun- 
tain on the other side was wooded with a young 
growth of trees, in some places growing in thick- 
ets or clusters. 

The Indian and the men followed me down 
hill and I approached the place where I heard 
the dogs, gun in hand. The dogs were, by the 
sound of their barking, running in on him and 
taking a nip at each run. After careful peer- 
ing into the clump of trees I thought I made out 
his fore quarter and fired. The moose simply 
sat down and elevated his head until his neck 
appeared as long as that of a giraffe. I thought 
this was the forerunner of his tumbling over 
dead. TMs, however, was not the case, for the 
next minute he broke cover and charged straight 
for where I was standing, a distance of only a 
few yards. My companions turned and fled and 



184 CANADIAN WILDS. 

I looked around for a suitable tree to dodge be- 
hind, but none was near. My left barrel was 
yet loaded and I realized my very life depended 
on my coolness and accurate shooting. 

It takes considerable more time to write this 
down than the event itself took. I planted myself 
firmly on my snowshoes and waited the proper 
moment. All fear had passed and I fully real- 
ized it was death to me if I missed my shot. 
On he came his great eyes blazing green in his 
anger and the coarse hairs on his neck and 
shoulders standing up like quills. In a case of 
strong tension on the nerve like myself at that 
time moments appear hours. He was in the act 
of making his last spring before reaching me 
when I took a snap sight along the barrel and 
fired fair in the forehead. I had just time to 
step to one side when he fell dead right in my 
old tracks. Death had been so instantaneous 
that he was so to speak "killed on the fly." We 
skinned and cut up the meat and were back at 
the post before the midday thaw set in. It was 
only that night when I looked at the adventure 
from all points of view that I fully saw the great 
danger I had run. 



CHAPTEK XXIV. 

AMPHIBIOUS COMBATS. 

Very few of the present generation of hunt- 
ers, I presume, have ever witnessed a fight be- 
tween a beaver and an otter. I venture to think 
that the narrative of such an event will prove 
interesting to readers of Hunter-Trader-Trap- 
per, especially as it conies first hand from the 
person who saw the fight from the start, and was 
in at the finish. It was an unique spectacle of 
once in thirty-five years of bush life. 

I must digress a little at the start to explain 
that otters often, in the autumn, endeavor to 
find some tenantless beaver lodge situated on a 
chain of small lakes. If fortunate to find such, 
they at once pre-empt the old lodge and make 
it their home and headquarters. If the fish sup- 
ply is ample in the lakes and small connecting 
creeks, they stay there until the snow hardens, 
and openings occur in the large rivers and then 
slide away to new fields, or rather, waterways. 
This migration is generally about the 20th of 
March in our Northern Country. 

One day in the latter part of October I port- 

185 



186 CANADIAN WILDS. 

aged my bark canoe over the divide into an- 
other chain of lakes/" with the object of ascer- 
taining if there were any beaver in that section. 
I came out to the shore of the lower lake of 
the string, in a small grassy bay, and was jnst in 
the act of taking the canoe off my head, when 
out in the bay, an acre or two from shore, I saw 
a beaver swimming on the surface at a high rate 
of speed. Being yet early in the afternoon I 
wondered at this and waited, with the canoe 
still tilted on my shoulders. All at once a long, 
shiny, snaky looking animal broke water in the 
wake of the beaver and a short distance behind 
the latter, evidently in pursuit. 

The beaver was no sooner aware of this than 
he appeared actually to stand half out of the 
water, the next instant he turned and faced his 
pursuer. The distance between the two was so 
short that in a moment they were fast to each 
other's throat and then for some minutes neither 
could be seen for the churning and splashing of 
the water. I took the opportunity while they 
were thus engaged to unload my canoe and slip 
it half way into the lake ready to embark. 

After the first fierce fighting impact and 
deadly grip, when they appeared pretty well ex- 
hausted — the fight going on at times on the sur- 
face — and again both would disappear beneath 
the waters of the lake, still locked together with 



AMPHIBIOUS COMBATS. 187 

the tenacity of bulldogs. Then they rose to the 
top, this time separated, and at some little dis- 
tance apart, both plainly much spent. Then they 
circled about one another, much in the same 
way as two boxers sparring. Again a mad rush 
at each other, and again the strong jaws of his 
opponent, and the same scene was enacted 
again. I thought it was about time to push out 
and take a closer aspect of affairs. The fight 
was interesting, but the chance of getting a 
beaver and an otter, with one shot, far sur- 
passed the proverbial, "two birds with one 
stone." 

What little breath of wind that ruffled the 
bay was in my favor, so with both barrels of 
my gun cocked leaning against the canoe bar, I 
sculled the birch silently but swiftly thru the 
water unnoticed by the combatants. When just 
about to take my gun, "the moment too late" 
occurred right then, and they separated as by 
mutual consent; the beaver swimming toward 
the shore and the otter pawing the water in a 
blind, dazed sort of a way. The latter being the 
nearer to the canoe and the most valuable of the 
two, I fired and killed him. On the flash and 
report of the gun, the beaver dived and I pushed 
the canoe in his direction, with the other barrel 
ready when he should come up. I had over- 
shot the place when he had disappeared and 



188 CANADIAN WILDS. 

waited looking toward the shore, where I ex- 
pected he would next come to view. Minutes 
passed and no sign, I turned about in the canoe 
thinking possibly he had doubled under. Not 
ten feet from the stern of the canoe, there was 
Mr. Beaver, dead without my firing a shot, 
dead from his wounds. I pulled him into the 
canoe and paddled back and picked up the otter. 

After getting ashore and examining them 
both carefully and again when skinning them, 
I found the beaver had died of his terrible 
wounds and no doubt the otter was in the last 
throes of his life also, when I gave him his quit- 
tance. The hair and skin on their bellies were 
much scratched and cut up by the sharp, hard 
claws of their hind feet. Their necks were one 
mass of teeth marks, and the jugular veins in 
each were pierced. Both would have died of 
their wounds in a little while, without the use 
of the gun, had I withheld my fire for a few 
minutes, for they were fast bleeding to death. 

I ascertained afterwards that this beaver 
had been the only one in the lake; the otter no 
doubt had driven him out of his house, and not 
content with this had pursued- him, courting 
battle. In the fight that ensued, of which I had 
been a witness, both had met their death. 
* * * 

The sight I witnessed some years ago is so 



AMPHIBIOUS COMBATS. 189 

unique that I think it will prove interesting to 
the readers of Forest and Stream. 

I was at the time stationed right in the 
moose country, having for its center the great 
Kipewa Lake. One day toward the end of No- 
vember, when, as yet only the bays of the big 
lake were frozen, I started to visit some mink 
traps in my canoe, accompanied by a small little 
rat of a dog. It was still open water in the 
body of the lake, but as I have said, the bays 
were frozen a couple of inches thick. There is 
a long point of land jutting into the lake. Open 
water washed the beach on my side of this ; but 
on the other side was a frozen bay. I landed 
about the middle of the point to fix up a mink 
trap. The little dog ran up into the timber, and 
a minute or two after I heard him giving tongue 
in a savage manner for so small a beast, and I 
knew he must have started up something extra- 
ordinary, possibly a bear. I ran down to the ca- 
noe for my gun, and started off in the direction 
of the barking, which by that time was becom- 
ing more remote. Pushing on, I came out to the 
shore on the opposite side of the point. Here I 
witnessed a sight never before nor after seen by 
me during a residence of over thirty years in 
the wilds of Canada. 

A large cow moose was slipping about on 
the glare ice trying to make her way to the other 



190 CANADIAN WILDS. 

side of the bay. I was so spellbound for a few 
moments that I let the opportunity pass to 
shoot. The ice Avas so glare that it was with dif- 
ficulty the large animal could make headway at 
all. 

My little dog had now come up with her, and 
very pluckily nipped her heels. The huge beast 
tried to turn in her headway to face the cur. 
In doing so, her four feet all slipped at once from 
under her, and her great weight coming down 
so suddenly on the thin ice caused it to break 
in fragments, and the moose was in the water. 

To get out of that hole with no bottom to 
spring from was more than that moose, or any 
other, could do, but the poor beast did not real- 
ize this, and continued swimming around, and 
every now and again getting its front hoofs on 
the slippery edge, only to fall backward again 
into the icy waters. 

The dog followed it about the opening, bark- 
ing continually, but the moose had more press- 
ing business than to bother with a small dog. I 
saw that the creature would never succeed in 
extracting itself, and thought to end its misery. 
From where I stood the distance from the shore 
was about two hundred yards. I therefore 
started to load my gun (it was before the days 
of breechloaders), but when I got to the final 



AMPHIBIOUS COMBATS. 191 

of putting on the percussion cap, there was 
none. 

Although I was positively sure the moose 
would be frozen stiff in that hole in the morn- 
ing, the fascination of the sight kept me stand- 
ing there on the rocks watching her struggles. 

I must have stood there for two full hours, 
as the sun of the short November day began to 
get near the treetops, and a cold, cutting north 
wind began to blow. 

The poor moose was now swimming about 
very slowly, and at times turning up on her side. 
This told me the end was not far off. 

The last look I gave she had part of her head 
resting on the ice, and her body was floating 
on its side. Then I recrossed the point and 
paddled home as fast as I could. 

Next morning we got a large canoe out of 
winter quarters, and with my two men we pad- 
dled back to the point, supplied with ropes and 
axes. The night had been a cold one, and had 
increased the thickness of the ice sufficient for 
us to walk upon. We cut a couple of long pines, 
or levers, and went out to the hole. The head 
was frozen just in the position I had last seen it, 
and this kept the body from sinking. Our first 
precaution was to chop the ice away about the 
carcass and get ropes about it. Then we got 



192 CANADIAN WILDS. 

another around the neck and chopped the head 
clear. 

We dropped it as it was to the shore, and 
there cut it up in quarters. All .of the breast, 
neck and front legs were quite useless, being a 
mass of conjee ted blood and bruised flesh, 
caused by the moose's contact with the ice. 
These condemned parts, however, were not al- 
together useless, because I used them to Jpait 
my traps. Besides the eatable part of the meat, 
I got twenty pairs of shoes out of the hide. 



Just after the above account of the very un- 
usual occurrence was received, a press dispatch 
telling of a somewhat similar happening ap- 
peared in the New York newspapers. There is 
no doubt that accidents of one sort and another 
are responsible for the death of large game much 
more frequently than we imagine. It is certain 
also that among the young of such animals there 
is a considerable mortality, although we do not 
know that any observations on this subject have 
been recorded. Every man who has hunted 
much, however, has probably seen something of 
this, and we should be glad to record any such 
experiences of this sort which our readers have 
had. We ourselves have not infrequently found 
young deer and antelope that had evidently died 



AMPHIBIOUS COMBATS. 193 

from diseases, and more seldom have seen young 
elk, and on two occasions, young mountain 
sheep, dead, for whose taking off there seemed 
to be no reason to be advanced except sickness. 
It is well known that on the fur seal islands of 
the North Pacific and the Bering Sea, thous- 
ands of pups die annually from disease, in addi- 
tion to the vastly greater number which starve 
to death through the killing of the mothers by 
pelagic sealing. 

The Hun account above referred to reads as 
follows : 

Captains Wisner, Verity and Ira Udall, who 
have been across the bay to Fire Island beach, 
arrived here to-day. They say that two deer, one 
a fine large six-year-old buck and the other a 
doe, had walked out on the ice and had broken 
through. They had been unable to get back to 
the mainland and were carried with the cur- 
rent. They drifted across the bay a distance of 
nearly ten miles and were being taken out into 
the ocean when seen by Captains Udall and 
Verity from the State wharf east of the light- 
house. 

The two men put off in a lifeboat and suc- 
ceeded in driving the buck ashore. The doe 
was almost dead by that time. Every effort was 
made to get her ashore and save her life. A 

13 



194 CANADIAN WILDS. 

rope was fastened around her body and she was 
soon on shore, although after no little effort. 
She soon, however, died of exhaustion. The 
buck ran off east on the beach, but unless its 
instinct is strong enough to teach it to follow 
the beast east to the mainland, seventy miles 
distant, it will soon starve, as the sand hills and 
meadows are now bare of vegetation. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

ART OF PULLING HEARTS. 

I see by inquiries answered and letters from 
F. Edgar Brown in an issue of Hunter-Trader- 
Trapper that my casual mention of pulling the 
heart of the fox in "Reynard Outwitted," has 
struck a chord of interest with trappers. As 
the knack of pulling the hearts of the smaller 
animals trapped is worth knowing, and will 
save the hunter dirty work in the skinning of 
the pelts, I will describe the process as plain as 
I can. 

It is bad enough to skin an animal that has 
been struggling in a steel trap, and got the im- 
prisoned leg a mass of congealed blood, without 
adding to the disagreeableness of the job crush- 
ing in his head or breaking his back with a pole. 
This at least can be avoided by pulling down 
the heart till the cords snap. In no other way 
do Indians, or those who have learned trapping 
from Indians, kill the small animals they find 
alive when visiting their line of traps. Foxes, 
martens, minks and rabbits are always killed in 
this way. Lynx, of course, is a nasty animal to 

105 



196 CANADIAN WILDS. 

approach in a trap, still the Indian trapper 
never thinks of shooting, or hitting him with a 
pole. On the contrary they fix a noosed cord 
to a young sapling cut for the purpose, and 
snare him from the length of the pole; once over 
his head they stand on the pole and let him 
struggle till dead. This prevents blood from 
being on the skin. A live bear in a steel trap 
must be shot to make "a good bear of him." 

But the Indian trapper again uses his judg- 
ment and waits till the first violent struggles 
are over, and the bear somewhat quiet, then the 
hunter takes careful aim and puts a bullet into 
his ear, being always at pretty close range. The 
ball passes clear thru the head, killing the bear 
instantly and making a wound that bleeds pro- 
fusely, so that when the skinning process takes 
place, there is no blood in the body. The skin 
is cut around the throat, skinned towards the 
body and the head left as it is. However, this 
is digressing from the subject at issue. 

The small animals I have mentioned when 
caught with snow on the ground, are simply 
walked on top of by .the hunter's snowshoes; 
once he is pinned doAvn so that he cannot move, 
the trapper slips his left hand under snowshoes 
and secures the fox or whatever it is by the neck 
with a tight grip of the thumb and fingers. 
Then the snowshoe is withdrawn until it holds 



ART OF PULLING HEARTS. 197 

the hind quarters only; the hand with the head 
and neck is elevated until the body is extended 
to its utmost. 

The right hand now feels for the heart just 
below the bottom rib; it may not be there at 
once, but it will come. When the animal feels 
the grip tightening on his throat the sense oi 
strangulation causes the heart to jump down 
and up in the body in the most violent manner. 
This the hunter seizes at one of the dowmvard 
pumps, catches it between the thumb and fingers 
of the right hand; then pulling the body in one 
direction and the heart in the other, the heart- 
strings snap. The animal gives a convulsive 
quiver and you chuck him down dead. 

Oh yes! it is much better than the brutal 
way of banging them on the head with the axe 
handle or a pole, and much more humane be- 
cause the animal is dead at once, almost as 
quick as if shocked with electricity. Animals 
trapped in the late fall, or early snow, cannot 
be held by the snowshoe, therefore some other 
means must be taken. It does not do to take 
any risks of being bitten, for animals after 
struggling in a trap for some time, become more 
or less mad, consequently the venom getting 
into one's blood might cause a very bad Avound 
to heal, especially as the man who hunts can- 
not avoid the cold getting into the sore, and then 



198 CANADIAN WILDS. 

should such happen one cannot foretell what 
the sequel may be. 

To avoid therefore all mishaps the hunter 
draws his belt axe, and cuts a forked young- 
birch or alder, the handle part being about four 
feet long, at the extremity of which a fork is 
left with prongs of five or six inches long. 

Presenting this to the trapped beast, he 
snaps at it ; the trapper watches his chance and 
deftly slips the fork over his neck and with a 
quick dowmvard push, marten, fox or fisher is 
secured. The left hand is exchanged for the 
forked stick, the right foot is placed on his hind 
quarters to keep him from clawing, then go for 
his heart with the right hand. One trying for 
the first time may have some little difficulty, but 
after a few animals have passed thru his hands 
he will as well as I do, know the ART OF PUL- 
LING HEARTS. 

During my many years as a fur trader, part 
of the time has been passed on the frontier 
where opposition is keen and hunters, both In- 
dians and whites, are careless in preparing their 
peltries for market. As long as they are dried 
in a way to keep, is all sufficient for them. Mus- 
quash will be simply drawn over a bent willow 
and dried in the blazing sun or near the camp 
fire. The little animal is hastily skinned and 
considerable fat is left on the skin, which, by 



ART OF PULLING HEARTS. 199 

being subjected to a quick and great heat, pene- 
trates the skin and it is consequently grease 
burnt. 

The greater number of beaver skins one gets 
about the Canadian villages are badly gotten up. 
This, in a great measure, is due to the French 
custom of buying by weights instead of by the 
skin, the hunters reasoning that the more meat, 
grease, flippers, etc., they can leave on, the 
greater number of pounds gross. 

Mink and otter are the two hardest animals 
we have to skin clean, and the majority we get 
on the frontier go to the London markets in a 
shameful state, and must tend towards their de- 
crease in value. I have seen foxes, minks, mar- 
tens and musquash as taken crumpled like rags 
from the same bag. It was a great wrench for 
me after handling skins of every sort positively 
prime, and as clean as the paper upon which 
this is printed, for twenty years to find myself 
on the frontier buying such burnt and crumpled 
skins, as I found was the rule rather than the 
exception. 

Yes, it was a pleasure to barter the furs 
hunted by our inland Indians; every skin was 
brought to the post hair side in. If the Indian 
had a bear, the two flanks were turned in 
lengthwise of the skin, then the hide was folded 
twice, the thick part of the head and shoulders 



200 CANADIAN WILDS. 

being brought down on top of all as a protection 
to the thinner parts. Large beaver were folded 
crosswise of the skin twice, making a kind of 
portfolio about eighteen inches wide by twenty- 
eight to thirty inches long. Small beaver were 
folded once lengthwise of the skin, and these 
came to us as a rule, two placed inside of each 
large beaver as they went. 

In the interior where the hunters have well 
defined grounds to trap on they, by self-interest, 
protect the beaver and kill comparatively few 
young ones. Our average for the whole year 
would probably be one small one to two middle 
or full grown. The martens are tied flat the 
whole length of the skins in bundles of ten eadh, 
with a thin splinter of cedar wood on top and 
bottom to prevent them from being crumpled in 
any way. Minks are treated just as carefully. 
Foxes, fisher and lynx are folded one crosswise 
and then placed either inside of beaver or bear 
skins. Thus nothing is exposed from an In- 
dian's pack of furs, either to view or friction, 
but strong leather. Musquash, like all other 
skins except bear and beaver, are skinned from 
the head down and each skin is cased, which 
makes them clean, flat and nice to handle. 

As their hunts are made during the cold 
months when the animals have their primest 
coats, and as every particle of flesh or grease 



ART OF PULLING HEARTS. 201 

is frost scraped, the skin lastly washed on the 
case and then the pelt dried by the action of 
frost alone, it can be readily understood with 
such care as I have tried to explain, that we get 
the very finest and most pleasing skins that go 
out of the country. The Indian's business is to 
hunt and bring the fruits of the chase or traps 
to his wigwam; it is his wife and daughters' 
duty to skin and cure the pelts. The Indians 
have the pride and ambition to vie with their 
sister matrons of the forest as to who will get 
up the cleanest, best and "well prepared skins." 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

DARK FURS. 

It is not perhaps generally known that the 
surroundings of most animals have a primary 
effect on the color of their hair. Beaver, otter, 
mink and musquash are dark or light colored 
according to the water they live in. Clear, cold 
water lakes produce skins of a deep glossy 
black, muddy lakes on the other hand, furnish- 
ing light colored fur. 

Having studied this in my own hunting and 
trapping, I have often surprised an Indian when 
trading his skins by saying: "You trapped this 
and this skin in a clear water lake," and he has 
admitted it as true. Another peculiar fact in 
relation to deep, cold water lakes is that, while 
the skins they produce are of the finest quality, 
they are also much smaller in size than those 
trapped in brown or muddy Avater, and this ap- 
plies to all the animals I have mentioned. 

Musquash killed in clear water lakes are 
about two-thirds the size of those trapped in 
grassy, sluggish rivers, and it is the same with 
mink. This rule holds good also with land ani- 

202 



DARK FURS. 203 

mals, such as marten, those living in and resort- 
ing to black spruce swamps being invariably 
dark colored, whereas those in mixed pine, birch 
and balsam hills are larger and lighter in color. 

For seven years I trapped on a chain of 
lakes, five in number. One of these lay off at 
one side, not over a quarter of a mile from the 
other four; it was of considerable extent, possi- 
bly a mile and a half long by a quarter wide. 
This lake was very clear and deep, and used to 
freeze over two weeks later than the others, and 
open that much earlier in the spring. 

On the borders of this lake, which was 
known as "Clear Water Lake," were two beaver 
lodges, which I preserved with the greatest care, 
only trapping a few out of each lodge every fall, 
thus keeping up the. supply, and finer and more 
beautiful skins I never handled. This valley 
being within a few miles of the post, I got the 
Indian who owned the lands to make over his 
rights for a consideration, and I kept these lakes 
as a home farm or preserve as long as I re- 
mained in that district. 

It was in the upper one of these lakes that I 
trapped the most extraordinary beaver of my 
experience, he having only one hind foot, the 
other feet having been gnawed or twisted off in 
traps. The Indian owner of the lands, when 
selling his good will, told me of this desperate 



204 CANADIAN WILDS. 

and cunning old animal and I passed many a 
long, solitary evening in my canoe to get a shot 
when the knowing old card broke water. 

I kept two or three traps well set, with a 
very remote possibility of his putting his only 
remaining foot therein. Beaver medicine and 
castorum would not allure him, and the thought 
occurred to me to try anise seed oil, which I did, 
and on my next visit had the satisfaction of 
pulling him up drowned at the end of the chain. 
The wounds of the cut off ,legs Avere so thor- 
oughly healed that when I skinned him there 
was not even a pucker of the skin in the places 
where the legs should have been. It is a marvel 
how he managed to navigate the waters of his 
native pond, but as the boy said, "I don't know 
how he did it, but he did." 

Another freak that I caught in those same 
lakes was the only albino beaver that I ever saw. 
She had a creamy white fur, with pink eyes, 
pink toe nails and pink scales on her tail. This 
may not have been phenomenal, but it was a 
rare skin for all that. At a conservative esti- 
mate I must have handled a couple hundred 
thousand beaver skins in 1113^ life, but this is the 
only instance that I ever saw a white one. 

The Clear Water Lake, not to be behind in 
oddities, produced a dwarf beaver. I caught 
him late in the fall in a trap set for musquash, 



DARK FURS. 205 

the other lakes being frozen over. He was 
about the size of an ordinary full grown rat, but 
was fully developed and must have been two 
years old. At first I thought he might be of a 
second litter, but I thought this was very im- 
probable, if not quite outside of nature, so I 
carefully examined the teeth and organs, and 
found to intents and purposes he was a full 
grown beaver. 

Writing of full grown beaver puts me in 
mind of those early trapping days, and the logic 
of a certain Indian. Then we used to pay so 
much a skin for beaver, and graded the skins as 
big, middling and small. In culling this man's 
skins I threw one into the pile of middling ones 
and he immediately said : "That's a big one," 
and I said it was not and compared it with sev- 
eral of the large ones. He, however, stoutly 
maintained it was a big one and said, "Look at 
the white men, there are big ones and small 
ones, but they are men the same." I stood cor- 
rected and placed the disputed skin with his 
better grown and developed relatives, the Indian 
gave an almost audible smile, and things went 
on amicably. 

On the watershed between the valley of the 
St. Lawrence and Hudson's Bay, marten are 
prime on the first of October. Beaver, otter 
and mink are prime on the 25th of October and 



206 CANADIAN WILDS. 

fox and lynx the 15th of November. I have of- 
ten seen the question asked in the H-T-T as 
to the time the several kinds of fur are prime in 
different localities, and the above dates can be 
depended upon for the latitude mentioned. 

It pays the trapper to have his trap-houses 
made and his traps hung up ready to set and 
bait immediately when the skins are prime. 
They are easily cleaned and command a much 
higher average, whereas if the majority of skins 
in a man's pack are unprimed or staged, it takes 
away from the value of the feAV really few good 
ones. 

The buyer, to get these few merchantable 
skins, has to put some kind of value on the culls 
to make a buy, but in reality the trader is only 
paying for the few good ones and the trapper 
loses the other skins. And who is to blame? 
Trappers have been told time and again that 
trapping too early in the season is against their 
best interests; nevertheless they go blindly on, 
killing the poor beasts that have little or no 
value, and then they marvel at the scarcity of 
the fur-bearing animals and the little return 
they have to show for a couple of months' hard 
work. 

No. If there is any line that wants protec- 
tion and a cast iron union between the men con- 
nected with the industry, it is the fur trade. All 



DARK FURS. 207 

are, or ought to be, interested in the keeping up 
of the supply and quality, the trapper, wholesale 
man and manufacturer alike. Let the last two 
unite and not buy unprime skins, and the for- 
mer for want of a market would very soon hunt 

in season only. 

* * * 

In this northern country fur-bearing animals 
continue prime much longer than elsewhere. 
The trappers and hunters (Indians) only come 
down from the interior from the tenth of June, 
and all the way down to the end of the month. 
Thus the month of June is the fur buying 
month. 

Prior to the Paris Exposition a fair and 
legitimate trade was possible, the Indians got a 
fair and reasonable price for their skins, and as 
a rule were reasonably honest. But that year 
marked the demoralization of the fur trade on 
this coast. Opposition became keen and fur 
buyers from Quebec, Boston, New York and 
Paris, came to the different places of resort of 
the Indians, bidding up raw furs to prices out 
of all reason. The consequence of which were, 
and are, that the Indian did not pay his fur- 
nisher, but kept up his finest furs to sell to these 
parties for high cash prices. 

Other traders followed the fur buyers, and 
sold the Indians useless trashy articles. The 



208 CANADIAN WILDS. 

result is the Indians have to leave for the bush 
ill supplied with warm clothings, provisions, 
etc. — what he actually requires. A large por- 
tion of his hunt has been sold for abnormal 
prices, but the proceeds has done him no per- 
ceptible good. On the contrary, his lot is much 
worse than it was before. Seeing his advances 
have not been paid, the resident trader will not 
supply these men again. 

I take about the Post of Seven Islands as 
perhaps being the place where the highest prices 
have been paid for three years, 1899, 1900 and 
1901, and give the readers of Hunter-Trader- 
Trapper the figures. They are as follows: 

Bears, large, black from. . . .$ 15.00 to $ 25.00 

Bears, small, black, from... 6.00 to 12.00 

Beaver per lb 3.50 to 4.50 

Fisher, from 6.00 to 10.00 

Pox, red, from 3.50 to 5.50 

Fox, cross, from 4.00 to 25.00 

Fox, silver, from 100.00 to 335.00 

Lynx, from 4.00 to 7.00 

Marten, from 10.00 to 20.00 

Minks, from 2.50 to 4.00 

Otters, land, from 15.00 to 22.00 

Wolverine, from 4.00 to 6.00 

These are the principal furs we have on the 
Coast and will show what absurd prices were 



DARK FURS. 209 

paid. We know that furs realized good prices 
at the last London sales, and some few, very 
few, bought were no doubt well worth these high 
prices. 

The part where the most harm was done the 
trade was the anxiety of some of these buyers 
to get the furs at almost any price. Almost any 
kind of a marten would be paid f 10 for. Such 
martens that the writer of this article has 
bought a few years ago for f 1.25, a very choice 
marten, large, dark and well furred, one we will 
say out of two or three hundred, such a one as 
we ordinarily paid $7 for, has brought f 18 to 
$20. Martens and otters especially, they seem 
to have gone perfectly crazy to get. 

Two years ago a man, further clown the 
Coast paid $720 for what I was told was a very 
ordinary Silver Fox. He went to Paris during 
the Exposition with the fox to sell. I never 
heard if he got his money back. Had he paid 
$150, he would have got the fox just the same 
for this was the price being paid along the Coast 
during that year. 

The rivers are the highways of the Indians 
and the mouths of most of the big ones are the 
summer camping grounds. At these places are 
trading posts where they barter and sell their 
winter's catch, get new supplies for another 

14 



210 CANADIAN WILDS. 

year, and load their canoes again in September 
for another nine or ten months in the Far North 
Wilds. 

When the reaction comes, as it must come, 
it will be-pretty hard to convince the Indians 
that their martens are only worth $5 or $6. 
The bottom is bound to fall out, and many of 
these men, who are paying the present prices, 
must go to the wall. With unlimited money, 
any fool can buy skins. But it requires a judge 
and careful man to buy with discretion. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

INDIANS ARE POOR SHOTS. 

During a residence of many years among 
four different tribes of Indians, I found, with 
very few exceptions, they were poor shots, 
either with the gun or rifle. 

When one considers that from young boy- 
hood they have been in the habit of using a 
gun almost daily, and their very living depends, 
in great manner, on accurate shooting, their 
poor marksmanship is to be wondered at, never- 
theless such is the case. A good wing shot is 
a rarity among the Indians. 

The Montagnais of the Labrador and North 
Shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, are no ex- 
ception, and this in a country where most of 
the wild fowl are killed flying. It is admitted 
they kill wild geese and ducks while on their 
passage north and south, but this is only possi- 
ble from the immense numbers of birds and a 
lavish expenditure of ammunition. 

It is a common thing for an Indian getting 
his spring outfit to go among the islands to take 
from the trader one hundred pounds of shot, a 
keg of twenty-five pounds of powder and two 

211 



212 CANADIAN WILDS. 

thousand five hundred percussion caps (they 
use muzzleloaders). They always take about 20 
per cent, more caps than are necessary to fire 
the powder, as they explain, to make up for 
what they drop. 

The Indians are very partial to loon ; but, as 
a rule, it is the most expensive food they eat. 
A great number alight on Lake Ka-ke-bon-ga on 
their way north in the spring. This happens 
about the time the Indians arrive at the Post 
to trade their winter catch of furs. 

When a poor unfortunate loon would settle 
on the lake it was the signal for ten or twenty 
canoes to put off and shoot or drown him to 
death. Far more frequently, I fancy, the poor 
bird expired from want of air than weight of 
shot. 

To watch these loon hunts from the gallery 
of our house was picturesque in the extreme, 
the canoes going, some 'in one direction as fast 
as the paddlers could drive them, and then all 
of a sudden the cry would ascend that the loon 
had broken water in quite the opposite place 
from where they were confident he would. Then 
in a moment, the canoes would be whirled about 
like tops, and off again in the new direction, 
possibly to again find they are at fault. 

The wonder to me was there were no casual- 
ties, as almost incessant firing was kept up, with 



INDIANS ARE POOR SHOTS. 213 

canoes going in several directions at once, and 
all on the save level; and when the loon would 
emerge, bang! would go several guns, regard- 
less where pointed, in the excitement. 

I call to memory one day in particular. At 
the call of "loon!" I took a seat on the gallery, 
with the fixed resolve to count how many shots 
would be fired, and this is the result of my tab. 

Twelve canoes put off from the camps, four 
hours consumed in the killing, and ninety-six 
shots were fired. 

This happened nearly forty years ago, when 
powder sold, at that inland post, at a dollar a 
pound; shot, thirty-three cents, and gun caps a 
half a cent each, so the reader can redily see 
that loon meat, under that way of hunting, was 
expensive. 

We read of and are told about the great 
slaughter the Indians used to make among the 
buffalo in the good old days; but this success 
was not to be attributed to their goods marks- 
manship, because they killed these noble beasts 
with their guns almost "boute touchant." 

One thing about their mode of loading and 
firing might be interesting to readers of the 
present day, inasmuch as a generation has been 
born and has grown up since the last buffalo 
roamed the plains. 

The Indians and half-breeds who went on 

I 



214 CANADIAN WILDS. 

these periodical round-ups were armed with 
and preferred the old nor-west muzzle-loading 
flint-lock. They could load and fire with such 
rapidity that one would almost fancy they car- 
ried a repeating gun. Suspended under their 
right arm by a deer thong, was a common cow's 
horn of powder, and in a pouch at their belt a 
handful or two of bullets. 

As the horse galloped up to the herd, the 
Indian would pour a charge of powder into his 
left hand, transfer it into the barrel of the gun, 
give the butt a pound on the saddle, and out 
of his mouth drop on top a bullet. As the lead 
rolled down the barrel it carried in its wet state 
particles of powder that stuck on the sides, and 
settled on top of the powder charge. No rod or 
ramming was used. 

The gun was carried muzzle up, resting on 
the hollow of left arm until such time as the 
Indian desired to fire. The quarry being so close 
no aim was required. On deflecting the barrel 
the trigger was pulled before the ball had time 
to roll clear of the powder. 

The Indians saw that their buffalo guns had 
very large touch-holes, thereby assuring the pan 
being primed. When all the balls were fired a 
few others were chuked into the mouth, and 
merrily went the game. 

No ! The Indians are not good shots. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

A BEAR IN THE WATER. 

The bear lias one trait especially that is 
most dangerous to the uneducated hunter, and 
that is when found swimming' a lake or river 
he invariably goes in a straight line from where 
he left the shore. Any obstacle in the way he 
clambers over, be it a log, boat or canoe. 

Should the place where he reaches the fur- 
ther shore be a high rocky bluff, he climbs this, 
rather than turn from his direct course. This 
may be pigheadedness or stupidity; be it as it 
may, he will not turn to a low-shelving beach a 
few yards at one side, but it never enters his 
head to take the easier landing. 

I once saw a bear swimming across near the 
discharge of a lake. There was a string of booms 
hanging down stream near the other shore and 
at right angles to where he was heading. He 
simply clambered over the boom logs and took 
the water again on the other side, instead of 
trotting along the boom to the shore. 

I was acquainted with an old Indian, who, 
knowing this trait of bears to land where they 

215 



216 CANADIAN WILDS. 

head for, did a deed of great nerve for a man 
of over sixty. He was visiting his fish net on the 
shore of a narrow lake, when he saw a large bear 
enter the water on the opposite side a little 
above, and head for the shore the old man was 
on. Old Pete had no gun, but he did not hesi- 
tate a moment, but caught up his hunting ax, 
and ran along shore to where the bear would 
land. The old man was plainly visible to the 
bear from the first, but Bruin kept on his direct 
course. Old Pete waded out from the shore 
nearly to his waist with ax unlifted, and waited 
Everything depended on striking true, and at 
the proper and precise moment. He had the 
bear, it is true, at a disadvantage. Still, many 
a younger and stronger man would have de- 
clined the risk. 

Pete was successful; he buried the ax clean 
into the skull the first blow. 

Another instance I witnessed of a bear not 
turning aside for any obstacle: We were later 
than usual one evening on the water; my men 
were anxious to get to the portage before camp- 
ing, and were tracking the canoe up the last 
mile at deep dusk. There were four men on 
the line ashore, and the bow and steersmen 
standing up in the canoe fending her off the 
rocks and shallows. My companion and I were 
sitting very quietly in the middle compartment 



A BEAR IN THE WATER. 217 

of our large canoe; the men also were not in a 
talking inood, 'being tired and hungry. I was 
sitting on the side next the river and noticed a 
black object which at first I mistook for a stone, 
partly out of the water ; but with a second, and 
more searching look, I made it out to be a bear 
coming straight toward the canoe. 

I gave warning to the man in the bow, who 
stood a few feet in front of me, and he imme- 
diately gave a sharp tug on the tow line, which 
checked the men ashore. The bear by this time 
was about five or six yards from the canoe, and 
just opposite me. I saw that nothing would 
now stop him from climbing into and across the 
canoe. Before he could place his paw on the 
side of the bark the man in the bow made a 
savage lunge at him with his pike pole, but be- 
fore he could give a second blow the bear was 
in on my side and out on the other, right across 
our legs. Our men of the tow had run back, the 
man in the stern being too far off to be of any 
use, had the presence of mind to throw an arm- 
ful of paddles, which being of maple, made for- 
midable weapons. When the bear got out on the 
shore side they rained blows upon blows with 
the sharp blades of the paddles upon his head 
and body as they could get a chance. The bow 
man sprang ashore and lent his assistance with 
his formidable pole, but marvelous as it may 



218 CANADIAN WILDS. 

sound, the bear escaped into the bush in spite 
of all that his assailants could do to prevent 
him. 

Long into the night about the dying embers 
of the camp-fire, I heard the men going over 
the whole scene and blaming one another for 
not having done something they ought to have 
done. 

One other instance I will give of a bear's per- 
sistency to go straight in the water, and in this 
case it was fatal to two men. 

Two newly married couples left the mouth of 
the Moisie for the interior. Their third day up 
stream brought them to a place where, off to 
one side in the bush about a mile back, was a 
noted lake for trout and whitefish. It was de- 
cided that they should portage one canoe, and 
with their blankets, net and cooking utensils 
go and pass the night on the lake shore. One 
gun was all the men took (a flintlock — for this 
was years ago). Shortly after arriving at the 
lake a bear was seen swimming from the other 
side, coming toward where the Indians were ty- 
ing their net. The two young men jumped into 
the canoe and pushed out to meet him, which was 
a fatal mistake. The man in the bow waited till 
the bear was within a couple of yards off from 
the bow, and then pulled the trigger. The old 
gun flashed in the pan, but there was no report. 



A BEAR IN THE WATER. 219 

The next instant the bear clambered over the 
head of the canoe and rolled the occupants into 
the water. The young brides of a few days ran 
screaming along shore, unable to render any 
assistance to their husbands, and actually wit- 
nessed both drown before their very eyes. 

I remember the arrival of the two poor 
women back to the coast, and the relation of 
their pathetic story. To make the case much 
more remarkable, they were twins by birth, and 
twin widows by this tragedy. 

A word of advice after the foregoing illus- 
trations of the danger of getting in front of a 
swimming bear is hardly now necessary, but one 
cannot impress too forcibly the danger in at- 
tacking a bear by a frontal move. Always ap- 
proach a bear in the water either on one side 
or from the rear. You can paddle up quite 
close to a bear in the direction he is swimming 
without the least particle of danger, and a more 
vital and telling spot to fire at cannot be got 
than the back and base of the skull. 



CHAPTEK XXIX. 

VORACIOUS PIKE. 

Galling the pike the fresh water shark is a 
name well applied, for he is bold and any- 
thing that comes his way is food for his maw. 
It is a known fact to those who have studied 
its habits that he will eat frogs, young ducks, 
musquash, in fact, anything that happens to be 
in front of him, not even barring his own off- 
spring. How destructive they are in a trout 
or whitefish lake is well known. 

One of the lakes on which I was stationed 
years ago was said to have been, formerly, good 
for whitefish, but was now almost nude of this 
staple food of the dwellers at the post, brought 
about by the increasing number of pike. 

As I was likely to be in charge, for a few 
years at least, I set to work to destroy these 
marauders. The lake is only a mile and a half 
long by a quarter broad. It discharges into a 
large river by a shallow creek, but, by this 
creek, no doubt, many pike were added to the 
number at each spawning time. 

The creek took my attention first, and we 

220 



VORACIOUS PIKE. 221 

staked it from side to side with pickets six feet 
high and planted them about two inches apart. 

At the back or river side of this barrier we 
kept some old, almost useless, nets set continu- 
ously. They were doubled so that no small sized 
pike could pass. This was done during the low 
water in August. 

My next move was to employ every boy, girl 
and old woman about the post trolling for pike. 
We supplied them with the trolls and lines and 
paid them a cent apiece for every pike over a 
foot long. 

During this trolling process we kept some 
nets of large mesh, set purposely for the bigger 
ones. For clays and weeks there must have 
been landed on an average a hundred a day, and 
yet they came. 

As most of the pay was taken out in cheap 
"bullseyes" at a cent apiece, the real outlay in 
money was not considerable. 

The following spring we inaugurated an- 
other system of warfare against the pests, and 
that was by paddling quietly around the bays 
and shooting them while they lay spawning and 
basking in the sun and shallow water. 

Often three or four would be clustered to- 
gether. A shot would not kill the whole, but it 
would stun them so we could finish them with 
the paddle. 



222 CANADIAN WILDS. 

One that was killed in this way measured 
thirty-nine inches long and weighed thirty-five 
pounds. A fish of this size was good eating, and 
therefore used at the post. 

The small, slimy ones, however, were burned 
in numbers on a brush heap. 

With such persistent and continued on- 
slaught on our part, at the end of the first year 
their numbers were very noticeably decreased, 
and at the close of the following summer they 
were positively scarce, and a very welcome num- 
ber of whitefish stocked our lake in their place. 

I resided at that post for twelve years, and 
we were never in want of the finest fish for the 
post's consumption. 

Before closing this sketch I must tell one 
anecdote about a pike, even if I lay myself open 
to be disbelieved by the reader. I am well aware 
that fish stories stand in bad repute and the 
veracity of the narrator doubted. The follow- 
ing is positively true and came under my notice : 

Years before the foregoing part of my story 
happened I was stationed on the height of land 
north of Lake Superior, and one afternoon port- 
aged my canoe over into a small chain of beaver 
lakes hunting for signs." 

It was a "still, calm day," as some high-flown 
writer would put it, 



VORACIOUS PIKE. 223 

A feather dropped would have fallen straight 
to the earth. 

I was paddling very quietly out into the lake 
• from the portage when I noticed something 
moving very gently on the surface a few yards 
ahead of the canoe. Getting closer I made this 
out to be the fin of some fish moving sluggishly. 
Pushing the canoe further in advance with 
noiseless knife strokes of the paddle, I got close 
enough to see it was a pike with a whitefish half 
protruding from its mouth and almost dead 
from suffocation. 

This, I thought, is a rare occurrence for a 
person to witness, and gently reaching out my 
hand I inserted my thumb and finger into the 
eye sockets and lifted both into the canoe. 

On getting ashore at the next portage I 
forced open the jaws of the pike, and the white- 
fish dropped from them. The half that had been 
inside the pike's mouth was quite decomposed, 
while the part out in the water was compara- 
tively fresh. 

In trying to swallow this fish, Avhich was 
two-thirds the pike's own length, he had dis- 
tended his jaws to the utmost, but they only 
opened enough to reach near the back fin, and 
here fixing his teeth in savage fury the biter 
had bitten more than he could eat. He was 
equally unable to disgorge himself as he was 



224 CANADIAN WILDS. 

incapable of swallowing, and thus by his greedi- 
ness he brought on his doom. 

Noticing his stomach was in a distended 
shape caused me to rip it open with my knife, 
and out tumbled the remains of a smaller white- 
fish, almost quite digested, which had been swal- 
lowed whole and would have measured nearly a 
foot long. 

It was gluttony and not hunger that caused 
him to reach an untimely end, a moral for 
greedy little boys. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THE BRASS-EYED DUCK. 

The whistler, whistle- wing, great head, gar- 
rot or brass-eyed is one of the few ducks that* 
to my knowledge, builds its nest in trees. 

The Indians, who are noted for giving ap- 
propriate names, call this duck "arrow duck," 
on account of its quick passage through the air. 
They fly very swiftly, and it is only an expert 
gunner that can bring them down in succession. 

I once had the rare opportunity of watching 
the doings of a female brass-eyed from the build- 
ing of the nest to the time she placed the young 
ones on the waters of the lake. To watch the 
industrious little builder was a most interesting 
pastime and afforded me much pleasure. The 
tree selected was not, as one would suppose, im- 
mediately on the shore, but a bit back in the 
thick growth. Properly speaking, the tree was 
a stump, although a strong live one grew rub- 
bing sides with it. The stump was on the south 
side of the green one, and thus protected from 
the north, and was about twenty feet in height. 

On examination shortly after the duck be- 

15 225 



226 CANADIAN WILDS. 

gan to lay, I found that the concave top had 
beeii lined with dead leaves, hay, clay and small 
sticks. After this one peep in at the archi- 
tecture and the couple of eggs therein, I re- 
frained from approaching the stump again, but 
continued my observations from a distance. 

When the duck took to steady setting I could 
just see her head and bill over the edge of the 
nest. Regularly each evening during the period 
of incubation she would fly out onto the lake to 
feed, drink and plume herself. These absences 
from her duty lasted from twenty minutes to 
half an hour. 

When the young were hatched I kept a strict 
and steady watch on her movements for the 
thought occurred to me, "How would they get 
to the ground?" But,Jike a good many other 
things, this riddle of the forest was made clear 
to me one evening near sundown. 

I sat motionless in my canoe a little to one 
side of the direction of the stump. The lake 
was as calm as oil, and in a little while, after 
taking up my position, out flew the mother in a 
slanting way to the water, and hanging from 
her bill was one of the young ducks. This she 
quickly deposited on the lake and flew back to 
the nest, and made trips to and fro, until she 
had brought the whole of her brood which num- 
bered seven. 



THE BRASS-EYED DUCK. 227 

A hen is a proud mother even with one 
chick; well this was a transported one with 
seven. She swam through the midst of them, 
around them, away from them and toward them, 
exhibiting the utmost delight. Finally she led 
them in toward the shore, the shadows of the 
woods shutting them out f rom . further observa- 
tion. While daily visiting my nets about the 
lake, I often encountered the brood, or saw them 
at a short distance and they continued to inter- 
est me. 

One day the number of ducklings appeared 
fewer than ought to be and on counting them I 
found there were only five. Next day this was 
reduced to four, and a few days after, when 
next I saw them, there remained only three. 
However, the mystery of their disappearance 
was made clear to me on that same day, for 
while trolling past the ducks' feeding grounds a 
big maskinonge struck the hooks savagely. 

Being alone in the frail and small canoe I 
had the utmost difficulty to successfully play 
and kill him,, but was amply paid, for on clean- 
ing the big fish we found in its maw one of my 
young ducks. 

Thus was their mysterious disappearance ex- 
plained, this, or some other large fish, was ac- 
countable for the brood's diminution. 

While on the subject of the brass-eye I would 



228 CANADIAN WILDS. 

wish to set the reader right in regard to the 
whistling noise they make, that is the male. 
The author of 'Wild Fowl and Their Habits" 
asserts that this noise is made by their short 
sharp wings cutting the air in rapid flight. 
Were this the case the female would make the 
same sound, but no one ever heard this whistling 
from a lone female or a number of females. 

It is from the male we get this; not from 
the wingS; however, but from a gristly sac at- 
tached at the end of the wind-pipe, much the 
shape of the bag of the bag-pipes. From this 
he emits several different kinds of sounds, as I 
have often listened to when approaching a flock 
on a calm moonlight night in the mating season. 

Another erroneous assertion by the same au- 
thor is that the flesh is rank, fishy and hard. 
The old ones are, more or less so, on their first 
arrival inland in the spring. At the sea, as a 
necessity, they live on fish, but a month after 
reaching inland waters, where they feed on ma- 
rine plants and roots, the color of the flesh 
changes. It also becomes juicy and is as good 
eating as black duck or teal. 

The young ones, when full fledged, just before 
migrating to the sea for the winter, are excel- 
lent. 

The French-Canadians call this duck the 



GOOD WAGES TRAPPING. 229 

diver and the half-breeds of Hudson Bay the 
pork duck. 

All the tricks of hiding attributed to this 
duck by Netlje Blanchan, author of the book 
from which I have taken the several names un- 
der which the duck is known to American read- 
ers, are quite true, and also other devices not 
enumerated. For instance, when wounded I 
have known it to dive and come up within a feAV 
yards of my canoe with its he^d under a water- 
lily leaf and there remain, quite motionless, un- 
til I noticed the center elevation of this single 
leaf and fired at a venture with the result that 
"I killed the duck. 

On another occasion I noticed a wounded 
brass-eye making toward the shore in very shal- 
low water. The formation of the banks was 
such that it was impossible for it to land and 
hide, Nevertheless, toward that shore it had 
dived, and never appeared above water. Push- 
ing the canoe quietly along with my gun ready 
in the other hand, I scanned every inch as I 
went. Along the beach there w&s a solution of 
mud almost as light as the water. The duck 
had passed under this and came to the shore in 
about fLYe inches of water showing nothing but 
its bill on the beach, the entire body being cov- 
ered with mud, the exact counterpart of that 
about it. 



230 CANADIAN WILDS. 

Although my canoe was within six feet of 
the bird, it never moved, and it was only by the 
closest scrutiny that I detected its presence. 

With a good silent dog playing in front of a 
blind these ducks in the early spring will come 
within short range, as will the black duck and 
gray goose. They have keen eyesight and will 
work in from a quarter of a mile to investigate 
the dog. The dog of best color to attract ducks 
is yellow or yellow and Avhite. A pure white is 
better than a dark colored, which latter only ap- 
pears to scare them away. 

[This is an interesting contribution, for it 
brings up a number of points about which there 
has been more or less controversy in the past, 
and one at least which is new to us. That Mr. 
Hunter's duck brought her young to the water 
in her bill is interesting and agrees with state- 
ments made years ago in Forest and Stream 
by Mr. George A. Boardman, who quoted a 
Canadian informant as stating that the old 
birds brought their young from the nests to the 
water, carrying them in their bills, but that to 
transport the young for a longer distance, the 
birds carried the young pressed to the body by 
the feet, a description which is not altogether 
clear. 

Mr. Hunter declares that the whistling noise 
made by the brass-eye does not come from the 



THE BRASS-EYED DUCK. 231 

wings and that this noise is never made by the 
female, in this his opinion differs from that of 
many other writers. In his belief the labyrinth 

— an enlargement of the wind-pipe found in the 
male of most ducks and but seldom in the female 

— explains the whistling sound so commonly 
heard when these birds fly near us. 

Food notoriously gives flavor to the flesh -of 
ducks as well as other animals. On the sea 
coast, where it feeds on fish and perhaps shell 
fish, the flesh of the brass-eye or golden-wing is 
notoriously bad, but like Mr. Hunter, other au- 
thors have declared that inland the bird is ex- 
cellent eating. 

The observation of the destruction of the 
brood by the maskinonge is worth recording. 
Pike, pickerel, maskinonge and snapping turtles 
are notorious enemies of young duck.] 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

GOOD WAGES TRAPPING. 

I questioned a couple of hunters (brothers) 
this summer, as to the results of their hunting 
adventures of the past season, and as I wanted 
to find out their positive net gains, I got the 
following figures from them. 

They are just fairly good trappers and their 
success is about what two industrious men 
could do who had a knowledge of trapping. 
Their work was in two spells. Three months 
in the fall and early winter and a month and 
a half in spring. 

The provisions they took inland for the three 
months (ascending one of the North Shore riv- 
ers) was the following with costs given: 160 
lbs. pork, |20.00 ; 20 lbs. butter, f 3.00 ; 360 lbs. 
flour, $6.40; 6 lbs. tea, $2.10; 21 lbs. sugar, 
$1.20; 2 lbs. soda, 10 cts. ; salt and pepper, 20 
cts.; $33.00. 

Their canoe was pretty well laden when 
they left the coast, inasmuch as besides the 
foregoing gross weight of provisions their outfit 
of tent, axes, pots, kettles, guns, tracking line, 

232 



GOOD WAGES TRAPPING. 



233 



poling irons, four dozen No. 1 traps, half dozen 
No. 3 and a quarter dozen No. 5 bear had to be 
added to the load, bringing the total weight 
approximately up to seven hundred and fifty 
pounds. 

Even when a canoe is loaded and, at times, 
overloaded, yet there are a number of incident- 
als that have to be taken along, things that 
_ weigh and are bulky, yet are not considered in 
the "estimate. For illustration these men had 
yet to load a pair and a half of blankets, two 
pairs snowshoes, a bag of extra moccasins, 
socks, duffle, warm underclothes, extra trousers, 
coats, mits and a hundred and one other things 
which men penetrating the wilderness for sev- 
eral months may require. 

In an expedition like this one must not think 
only of things necessary, but also things that 
may be required when a man is two or three 
hundred miles away from civilization and cuts 
his leg. He has no drug store to get plaster 
from. A full list of all a couple of prudent men 
have to take with them is quite interesting. 

To resume, — these men left on the 10th of 
October and got back to the coast (on foot) the 
12th of January, being absent almost exactly 3 
months. They cached their traps, canoe and 
surplus things inland ready for the spring hunt. 

After spending a fortnight with their fam- 



234 CANADIAN WILDS. 

ilies cutting wood ana choring about their 
abodes they tlieu went to work in the lumber 
camps for February and March. On April 15th 
they made a start for t4ie interior once more, 
this time each hauling a flat sled loaded in equal 
weight with the following provisions: 80 lbs. 
pork, f 10.00 ; 10 lbs. butter, f 1.50 ; 180 lbs. flour, 
|3.20; 3 lbs. tea, $1.05; 12 lbs. sugar, 60 cts; 
1 lb. soda, 5 cts. ; salt and pepper, 10 cts ; $16.50. 

With their other things this made a dead 
weight of about one hundred and eighty pounds 
per sled. On mixed ice and bush walking at 
the season when the snow is crusted a man will 
average, with such a load, twenty-five or thirty 
miles a day. 

There are many hunters that are quite su- 
perstitious about parting with a. single skin 
until the hunting or trapping season is over and 
then the whole collection is sold 'en-blac. ? Other 
hunters again will sell their fall hunts less a 
skin. This reserved skin may be only a mus- 
quash. They keep this, as they say, to draw 
other skins when next they go trapping. The 
men I am writing about had no necessity to sell 
in the winter, and therefore kept all till the 
spring. The commencement of June is still con- 
sidered spring in the North country. 

The total catch and the prices realized are 
as follows: 38 martens at $10, $380; 10 mink 



GOOD WAGES TRAPPING. 235 



at |2.50, $25; 1 beaver, $7; 2 bears at $7, 

3 bears at $20, $60; 4 fishers at$7, |28; 1 otter, 

$15; 120 musquash at 15c, $18; amount, $547.00. 

SUMMARY OF TRAPPING. 

By total hunt, $547.00 ; to provisions, $49.50 ; 
sundries, 70 cts; 2 men's net earnings for 135 
days at $1.84 equals $496.80. 

The amount per diem clear to each of the 
brothers may not appear to the reader as very 
remunerative, yet compared to working in the 
shanties they did much better. The wages for 
good axe men last winter were from eighteen 
to twenty dollars per month. 

Compared with the same length of time 
working in the lumber camps the figures would 
stand thus: 4^ months lumbering at average 
wages of $22 equals $99; 41 months trapping, 
$248.40. In favor of trapping, say in round fi> 
ures $150.0,0. 

I submit the foregoing to the readers of H> 
T-T, hoping it may prove interesting. 
* * * 

It is no doubt ancient history, still it may 
be interesting to the readers to know the large 
hunts made by some of our Indians in the latter 
Ws. Referring to a note book kept in those 
days I find the hunt of one particular Indian 



236 CANADIAN WILDS. 

recorded. His name was A-ta-so-kan — the only 
help he had, a boy of twelve. 

This family left the Post in August and only 
returned the following June. His hunting 
grounds were just across the heights of lands 
going towards Hudson's Bay, from the head- 
waters of the Ottawa River. Game of all de- 
scription was very plentiful then; so much so 
that, providing an Indian had a few pounds of 
flour and lard to get away from the vicinity of 
the station, his guns nets and snares kept him 
in abundance. A-ta-so-kan, altho having sev- 
eral children besides the boy took only fifty 
pounds of flour, ten pounds of lard, one pound 
of tea, and ten pounds of tobacco. Goods, how- 
ever, he supplied himself well with — such as 
many of various bright-colored flannels, yards 
of duffle, yards of H. B. strouds, both blue and 
white, and several pairs of H. B. wool blankets. 
These people Avere brought up on country pro- 
duce: i. e., fish and flesh, -therefore found it no 
hardship to be without flour, etc., — the white 
man's food. From that one man and his young 
boy I got at the end of the hunting season 
(first of June) the following furs: 

96 Large Beaver Skins. 
226 Small Beaver Skins. 
32 Otters. 



GOOD WAGES TRAPPING. 237 

120 Martens. 
35 Minks. 
40 Lynxes. 
1236 Musquash. 

Making altogether four of our eighty pound 
packs of furs. This, of course, was an excep- 
tional hunt — still we had several other Indians 
who ran A-ta-so-kan a close second. 

What a difference in the stretching and dry- 
ing of that man's skins, compared with those 
we get on the frontier. Each skin, apart from 
the musquash, was as clean as note paper, all 
killed in season and all dried in the frost or 
shade. On the line of civilization there is such 
keen competition among the traders to get furs, 
that the hunters stretch and dry the skins in 
any way. Beaver, for instance, which is bought 
by the pound, is frequently weighted with syrup, 
and sand rubbed into the hair and paws, and, 
considerable flesh left on, all tells when three 
or four dollars a pound is paid. 

The Abanakis Indians about St. Francis 
Lake, St. Peter, are noted for their tricks of 
the trade, and when you get a blue-eyed Aba- 
nakis, look out to be cheated. I call to mind on 
the St. Maurice River, when stationed there, 
one of these gents brought furs to sell at our 
Post. Among the lot was a beaver skin. Ac- 



238 CANADIAN WILDS. 

cording to its size, if well dressed, it ought to 
have weighed a pound and a half, or three quar- 
ters at most. Judge of my surprise when I 
found it tipped the scales at two and half 
pounds. This was phenomenal and uncanny, 
and I remarked to the hunter, that we would 
leave the skins in the store until after dinner 
before closing the trade. 

During the mid-day hour I slipped out and 
examined the skin critically, and found the 
rascal had flinched up layers of the inner skin 
or "cutem," and had inserted small sheets of 
tea-chest lead, after which he had pressed the 
skin down flat and dried it in this state. This 
was insult added to injury, because about a 
month previous he had begged the lead from me 
to make bullets with. Verily there are more 
tricks with horses and furs than meets the eye. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

A PARD NECESSARY. 

I say for safety, successful hunting, and di- 
vision of the many necessary labors, when the 
hunting or trapping day is over, a proper part- 
ner is necessary. I am aware many old hunt- 
ers have passed years quite alone in the solitude 
of the trackless forests and the valleys of the 
mountain ranges, but what a life! What risks 
they have run! Some may have led this life 
from choice or from greed to possess the whole 
proceeds of the trapping season ; still it is a life 
no man should lead. 

Sickness rarely overtakes a trapper; the 
outdoor life they practice is conducing to good 
health; continual exercise and fresh air engen- 
der a good appetite, but there is always the risk 
of accident, accident in many ways. The guns, 
the axe, the canoe, breaking through the ice, or 
even getting caught in one of his own traps ; in 
fact by the last mentioned source of danger I 
have known two men to lose their lives in a 
most horrible way of torture and agony, and 
these men were not novices at the business; one 

239 



240 CANADIAN WILDS. 

was a middle-aged half-breed, born and brought 
up to trapping/ and the other was an old Nova 
Seotian who had trapped and hunted for forty 
years and yet he died in a bear trap. 

Man Avas not intended to live alone, and a 
trapper who passes the best part of his life far 
away from his fellow man becomes selfish, 
crabbed and morose. No matter how successful 
he may have been in his hunting years, when 
old age comes on, liis last moments are gener- 
ally passed alone in some miserable shanty, cov- 
ered with dirty .and musty old clothes and blan- 
kets, no one to pass him a drink of water or 
wipe the death sweat from his brow, or else 
some good person on the fringe of civilization, 
partly from charity or necessity, takes in the 
broken old hulk and keeps him until the end. 
A grave somewhere outside the fence is pointed 
out as where "Old Pierre," the trapper, is 
buried. I have several such resting places in 
my mind as I pen these lines. 

No, I maintain a companion in hunting and 
trapping is a necessity in many ways. In se- 
lecting one they should be alike in only two 
points — age and honesty. If the head of the 
partnership is short, stout and of a phlegmatic 
nature, his chum ought to be say iive feet ten 
inches high, weigh one hundred and fifty 
pounds, of a nervous energetic nature and cheer- 



A PARD NECESSARY. 241 

fill. Two such men are most likely to get along- 
well together. 

Animals don't 'come to the camp door and 
ask to be skinned. On the contrary trapping, 
to do it right, is hard work and when the real 
day's work of tramping through swamps and 
over mountains setting traps is done there is 
yet much work for the cold, wet and hungry men 
to do at the camp; cutting and carrying the 
night's fire wood, cooking their supper, drying 
their clothes for the morrow, patching broken 
moccasins and skinning and stretching pelts 
they may have secured that day. With a good 
pard these labors are, of course, divided, and 
each cheerfully and silently takes his share. 

There is nothing I have enumerated but 
what has to be done every night. A trapper 
returns to his camp, and if he has to make a 
new camp at the end of his trail so much more 
and harder is the work, and the poor old trap- 
per without a companion must, of necessity, 
perform all these duties alone, the completion 
of which takes him far into the night. Brother 
trappers, I know whereof I write. I have tried 
both and I say for division of labor, for good 
comradeship and for positive safety select and 
join fortune with "A Good Pard." 

To illustrate, I give one of my own experi- 

16 



242 CANADIAN WILDS. 

ences : I reached my camp once at dark in Feb- 
ruary, utterly tired out, wet by the melting snow 
on my clothes, and a fast that had not been 
broken at noon. There were a few burnt sticks 
in the fireplace (a lean to camp), these I raked 
together and started a blaze. With my exces- 
sive fatigue and the warmth of the fire, I fell 
asleep as I leaned for what I thought was a mo- 
ment, against a stump in the camp. It was a 
dispensation of Providence that I ever awoke, 
but I did, far into that February night. On 
waking I realized in a moment the narrow es- 
cape that I had had. The great trees of the 
forest were cracking all about me with the in- 
tensity of the cold. My wet clothes were stick- 
ing to me as if of ice, but my brain was clear 
and I knew no time was to be lost in my self- 
preservation. 

After tramping about and beating my body 
for some time to create circulation, I was re- 
warded by feeling my blood flow once more in a 
natural way. ,The last quarter of the moon shed 
what light it could over the tree tops and I 
strapped on my snowshoes and went to work at 
chopping wood to last till morning. A good 
cup of tea, some biscuit and pork and the then 
bright and cheerful fire made me my old self, 
but I received a lesson never to be forgotten, 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

AN HEROIC ADVENTURE. 

When we had come to anchor in Trinity Bay 
and all the sails were safely stowed, the captain 
of our yacht proposed we should go ashore and 
see the celebrated Comeau fils. 

Bob, my companion asked, "Celebrated for 
what?" 

"Oh! for several things," replied the cap- 
tain. "He is a most extraordinary man in his 
many acquirements and knowledge. Born and 
brought up on this coast, he has passed all his 
life here, with the exception of the three years 
his father was able to send him to school, but 
those three years he made use of to lay the foun- 
dation of a wonderful store of practical knowl- 
edge. His schooling, as I have said, was but 
the foundation ; by reading and observation he 
has added to it in a marvelous way. 

"From his early training and the life of 
every one on the coast, it would go without say- 
ing that he knows how to shoot, but he is more 
than a good shot, he is a 'deadly' shot. Any- 
thing he aims his gun at that is within shooting 

243 



244 CANADIAN WILDS. 

• 

distance is dead. As a salmon fisher, no crack 
angler who visits these rivers can hope to com- 
pete with him. - 

As a linguist he can speak, read and write 
in French, English, Latin and Indian; besides 
this, he can talk rapidly in the dumb alphabet. 
He holds the position of telegraph operator at 
Trinity, also of postmaster and fishery overseer, 
and besides, when anything goes wrong with the 
line for tAvo hundred miles east or west, the de- 
partment immediately wires him to go and fix 
them up. 

"He has more than a fair knowledge of med- 
icine for one who derived all his insight from 
reading alone. Last summer there was an epi- 
demic of measles all along the coast, among both 
whites and Indians. Here, with a population 
of 150, two-thirds of whom were down Comeau, 
who attended them, did not lose one patient, 
while at Bersimis, where the department sent a 
full-fledged M. D., there were thirty-nine burials 
out of a population of 450. 

"You may be sure the poor people all along 
the coast love him." 

So the boat Avas lowered away, and the Cap- 
tain, Bob and I were rowed ashore to see this 
paragon. From the outside look of the place I 
could see the man was one of good taste and 
orderly. The knock at the door was answered 



AN HEROIC ADVENTURE. 245 

by Comeau himself. The Captain was person- 
ally acquainted with him and introduced us be- 
fore we entered. I must say I was disap- 
pointed. One always is when he has pictured a 
person in his mind's eye and finds that in real- 
ity he is quite a different kind of person. 

I had looked for Comeau to be a large man 
and a boisterous one from his position of super- 
iority over others. On the contrary, I found 
him below the medium, a quiet, low-voiced man, 
reserved almost to shyness. I saw at once he 
was a great observer, one who would make de- 
ductions from specks invisible to ordinary peo- 
ple; or, in other words, he could put two and 
two together and dovetail them better than most 
men. 

We were ushered into a large, clean, airy 
room, in the middle of which sat a very good 
looking lady in a roomy rocker, with a child on 
each knee. If Comeau himself is reserved and 
not inclined to talk,, his wife can do enough for 
both. She excused herself for not rising when 
her husband introduced us. Xodding down at 
her babies, she said, "You see I am fixed." One 
could see she is a proud mother — they are 
twins; this she told us before we were well 
seated, and she further informed us that they 
were the only twins on the Labrador. So she is 
celebrated also. 



246 CANADIAN WILDS. 

When we got fairly settled in Comeau's den, 
the conversation naturally drifted into hunting 
and fishing. Bob made some inquiries about 
the pools on the Trinity. To make his explana- 
tions clear, Comeau pulled out a drawer of pho- 
tographic views of the river. In rummaging 
these over, he cast aside a gold medal. "Excuse 
me," I said, reaching over and taking up the 
medal. On it I read engraved : 

"Presented to N. A. Comeau by the K. H. S. 
for Bravery in Saving Life. 

Upon my asking him to recount the circum- 
stances, he blushed and looked quite confused, 
and said: "Oh! it was nothing worth speaking 
of, but I suppose people talked so much about 
it that they gave me that token. It was noth- 
ing more than any man would have done," and 
this was all we could get from him unless we 
had carried persistency to an ungentlemanly de- 
gree. 

After having spent a very pleasant hour, we 
returned on board, and the Captain told us the 
story that the hero himself would not : 

Two years before, one day in January Co- 
meau arrived home from the back country to 
find that two men had that day while seal hunt- 
ing off shore been driven off the coast toward 
the ice pack in the gulf. One of the men was 



AN HEROIC ADVENTURE. 247 

Comeau's own brother-in-law, and the other a 
half-breed. In spite of the supplications of his 
wife and the persuasions of the other individ- 
uals of the place, Comeau set about prepara- 
tions to follow them out to sea. He asked no 
one to accompany him. 

The wind all the afternoon had been steadily 
off shore and was now moderately calm. He 
took with him some restoratives, provisions, a 
lantern, a couple of blankets, his rifle and am- 
munition and what else useful he could think 
of in his hurry. The ice pack was then about 
ten miles off the land, and he reasoned the men 
must be on the ice, if large and strong enough, 
or in among it if in small cakes, the latter being- 
much more dangerous. 

From Trinity to Matane in a direct line the 
distance is forty-five miles, and to push out in a 
frail, Wooden canoe alone and the darkness 
coming on in the black gulf in mid-winter re- 
quired a brave man with extraordinary nerve to 
dare it, and this Comeau did. 

Three minutes after pushing out from the 
beach, canoe and man were swallowed up in the 
darkness. The next the people of Trinity heard 
of him was a telegraphic message on the second 
day after. It read: a Matane. All three alive. 
Joseph, hands frozen; Simon, both feet frozen 
badly." 



248 CANADIAN WILDS. 

This message was to his family, but the Ma- 
tane people sent a much longer one to the gov- 
ernment, giving the facts, describing the hard- 
ships these men had come through, and a spe- 
cial train was sent down with the best surgeon 
from Quebec. On the surgeon's arrival at Ma^ 
tane a consultation was held with the county 
practitioner, when it was decided that the man 
Joseph would have to lose two fingers on each 
hand and Simon both feet. 

The amputation was successfully carried out 
next day, and shortly after, when Comeau saw 
both men well on to recovery, he started for his 
home, not, however, by the way he had come, 
but up to Quebec by the south shore and down 
the north shore from Quebec, a distance of near- 
ly 700 miles. The last hundred he made on 
snowshoes. 

The Captain told us that the description of 
this very venturesome trip he had heard from 
Oomeau's own brother as the elder one had de- 
scribed it in the heart of his own family. He 
had reached the ice pack, to the best of his judg- 
ment, about fifteen miles from the land, and had 
remained on his oars and hallowed once or twice 
without receiving an answer. He suddenly be- 
thought himself of the lantern. This he lit and 
lashed to the blade of one of his oars, and 
erected it aloft. Immediately a faint cry was 



AN HEROIC ADVENTURE. 



249 



heard to the eastward, and lie lowered his light 
and pulled away in the direction whence the 
call appeared to come. After rowing for ^ a 
short time the lantern was waved above again, 
and this time an answering shout came from 
close at hand. 

The two poor fellows were some distance in 
the pack, and had got on the largest cake they 
could find. They were sitting there helpless, 
holding on each by one hand to the rough sur- 
face of the ice, and with the other to their canoe 
to keep it from being washed off. 

By the aid of the lantern held aloft, Comeau 
saw there was a much larger cake of ice some 
distance further in the pack. To this they 
made their way with laborious trouble. Push- 
ing one canoe as far ahead among the ice as pos- 
sible, they would all three get into this, shove 
the other in advance in the same way, and so 
repeating the process till they reached the solid 
field. Once safely on this, for the meantime, 
secure place, food was partaken of and daylight 
waited for. 

Soon, however, the intense cold began to 
make itself felt, and drowsiness was* fast taking 
hold of the two men, and their great wish was 
to be left alone and allowed to sleep. This 
Comeau knew if indulged meant death, and it 
took all his efforts to keep them awake and mov- 



250 CANADIAN WILDS. 

ing about. Once while attending to the half- 
breed, his brother-in-law dropped down and 
was fast asleep in an instant. Comeau boxed 
him, kicked him, without having the desired ef- 
fect of rousing him from his stupor. At last he 
bethought him of what an old Indian had done 
to him under somewhat similar circumstances. 
He caught the man's nose between the thumb 
and finger and tweaked it severely. This 
brought him to his feet and mad to fight. 

Day was now breaking, and they could see 
the south shore at a computed distance of ten 
miles. Comeau also saw that the ice pack was 
drifting steadily east, and this, if they remained 
on the ice, would carry them past Cap Chat, 
the most northern point of the south coast, and 
this meant death to a certainty. 

A rapid train of thought went through Co- 
meau's brain. He decided that if saved they 
were to be, it must be by passing over that ten 
miles of moving, grinding ice. He forced some 
food on the others and gave each a small dram 
of spirits ; how much rather would he have given 
them tea or coffee. But even if he had had it, 
water was wanting to make it. They aban- 
doned the roll of blankets, which had been of no 
use to them, and started, using the canoes see- 
saw fashion as they had done the night before. 
They left the cake of ice upon which they had 



AN_ HEROIC ADVENTURE. 251 

passed the night at 8 A. M. and only got ashore 
at the extreme point of Cap Chat at daylight 
next morning. At times they would come 
across narrow lanes of Avater, but these lanes 
always ran at right angles to the direction in 
which they were going. Several times, when 
stepping upon what was considered a strong 
piece of ice, one of the party would be immersed 
in the cold, cruel water, and be rescued with 
great trouble* and danger to the others. 

What a picture of heartfelt prayer offering 
it must have been, to have seen those men kneel- 
ing on the ice-bound shore, pouring out their 
thanks to the ever-watchful Almighty who had 
brought them safely through such dangers. 



Bob, who had taken down the Captain's nar- 
rative in shorthand, gave me his notes, and I 
give the story of adventure and heroism to the 
public. 

Comeau is well known by most of the mem- 
bers of the Forest and Stream clubs of New 
York and Montreal. 



CHAPTEK XXXIV 

WILD OXEN. 

I read in one of the May issues of Forest 
and Stream of a clog that joined a band of 
wolves and became as savage and fleet of foot 
as the best of them, and brought to my mind a 
circumstance that came under my own observa- 
tion, of a pair of steers that threw off all tram- 
mels of restraint and took to the bush. 

I think it is worth recording, for it shows 
that even horned cattle brought up with care, 
and fed at regular intervals can support them- 
selves, even through the rigor of a northern win- 
ter in the wild bush country. 

In my early days on the Labrador we were 
in the habit of getting our winter beef on the 
hoof from the villages on the south shore. The 
cattle were sent over by schooner, late in the 
fall, and stall-fed until the cold weather set in, 
Avhen they were killed and the carcasses hung 
up to freeze. As we had no wharf accommo- 
dation, the cattle were unloaded in a primitive 
and unceremonious way. The schooner an- 
chored two or three hundred yards from the 

252 



WILD OXEN. 253 

shore. The cattle sided up alongside the rail 
next the beach, and a couple of sailors intro- 
duced hand spikes under the animal's body, the 
end engaging the top of the rail. At the word 
"Go" the beasts were hurled sideways into the 
water. Rising to the surface, after the plunge, 
they naturally struck out for the shore, where 
we had men with short ropes ready to secure 
them and lead them away to the stable. 

On the occasion upon which I write we had 
a consignment of five three-year-old steers, the 
meat of which, augmented by the usual game of 
the country, was considered sufficient for the 
post's use during the following winter. 

Two of the bunch reached footing in such a 
lively state that they baffled the combined efforts 
of our men to capture them, and with a few de- 
fiant snorts and bounds, they reached the primi- 
tive forest and were lost to view. 

As soon as I realized that there was a possi- 
bility of the animals being lost to us, I turned 
out all the mangers on" about the post, with 
our own men in hot pursuit. Night coming on 
shortly after, the hunt was given up, only to be 
resumed with greater energy the following day ; 
but the nature of the ground being hard, hoof 
marks were indistinguishable, and to use dogs 
would only make the cattle wilder. Once more 
the men had to reluctantly abandon the search 



254 CANADIAN WILDS. 

and return to the post, and although we kept 
up the hunt for several days more, we failed to 
locate the missing "meat." 

In due course of time, snow covered the 
ground, and men circled the bush in the vicinity 
of the post without any results, and we had un- 
willingly to place the two steers on our profit 
and loss account. • 

Time went on, the winter passed, and the 
summer also, and none of the visiting Indians 
reported any signs of the cattle. 

The following winter, in February, a party 
of hunters came in fronl the headwaters of the 
Moisie River, 150 miles north of us, and they 
reported having killed our cattle among a small 
herd of wood caribou. To prove their story they 
produced the horns which they had brought 
down all those miles on their toboggans as 
visible proof. 

The report they gave me was as follows: 
They had come across the tracks of this small 
bunch of caribou (five) with which the oxen 
were living in consort, sometime in early De- 
cember. The animals winded them and the 
hunters failed to sight the herd. 

As the snow was yet shallow, they left them 
unmolested until after the New Year, when the 
men from the nearby camps organized a hunt 
expressly to run them down. 



WILD OXEN. 255 

From hearsay they thought the strange 
tracks were those of moose, and were very much, 
surprised when the herd was sighted to find 
they were horned cattle, and at once concluded 
(and vefy correctly) that they were the long lost 
cattle. 

The chief informed me they were so fleet of 
foot that the fi.\ r e deer were come up with and 
killed before they overtook the steers, which 
were rolling fat, sleek of coat and had an under 
growth of wool such as the deer had, showing 
that under different circumstances nature had 
given them this protection against the severity 
of the climate. 

I hardly think I would have credited their 
story with the proof, and further, the next sum- 
mer, when they came in to trade on the coast, 
they brought me a piece of the thigh skin of 
each animal. Verily these oxen had a call, from 
the wild and took it and became as one with 
the denizens of the bush. 

Eeading of the dog that fraternized and 
went off with the wolves brought this to my mind 
after a lapse of forty-one years. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

LONG LAKE INDIANS. 

The two years I passed in charge of the Hud- 
son's Bay Post of Long Lake, situated on the 
water-shed between Lake Superior and Hud- 
son's Bay, was the happiest of any period of my 
long service. 

The conclusion I have arrived at, after con- 
siderable experience, is that Christianizing, in 
no matter what form, has only made. the Indian 
worse. 

It is the verdict of all who have had to do 
with the red man, that he copies all of the white 
man's vices and very few, if any, of his virtues. 

Indians I found at Long Lake, in the mid- 
dle seventies, were Pagans, but they were hon- 
est, truthful and virtuous. 

We locked our tradeshop, not to prevent rob- 
bery, simply to guard against the door being 
blown open. Not one of these Indians would 
have taken a pin without showing it to me first 
and saying: "I am going to keep this," holding 
up the pin. 

My predecessor had been stationed at that 
256 



LONG LAKE INDIANS. 257 

post in an unbroken charge of over twenty 
years. He was a man of system and everything 
went by rote. There were certain fixed dates 
for out-fitting the hunters; certain dates for 
those short of ammunition to come and get it in 
the winter; and, best of all, certain dates for 
them to arrive in the spring and close their 
hunts. This assured us of getting only prime, 
seasoned skins, and such skins it was a pleasure 
to handle, since the paper upon which this is 
printed is not whiter than every skin that passed 
thru my hands in those two years. 

I am writing of the days before the Canadian 
Pacific Railway passed thru that country when 
there were no whiskey peddlers going about de- 
moralizing the Indians. There being no oppo- 
sition we regulated the catch of furs. When 
we found, by general report of the hunters, that 
a certain kind of fur was becoming scarce, we 
lowered the price for that particular animal's 
pelt so low as to not make it worth their while 
to trap it. For instance, while I was there, the 
beaver was having our protection, and, as a con- 
sequence, in three years every little pond or 
creek became stocked with beaver. The Indian 
hunter did not suffer, because we paid the most 
liberal prices for the skins that were most plen- 
tiful. This policy, however, could only be car- 

17 



258 CANADIAN WILDS. 

ried out at places where there was no compe- 
tition. 

The gentleman in charge was the representa- 
tive of the "Great Company" and what he said 
was law. Our interests and those of the In- 
dians ran on parallel lines. 

It was to our interest to see all that the In- 
dian required should be of the very best. That 
he should have good, strong, warm clothing, 
good ammunition and double-tower proved guns 
was essential to his ability to hunt, his comfort 
and his very life. 

It was drilled into the hunters at each yearly 
send off, that if he did not exert himself to hunt 
sufficient to pay the advances given him, that 
the "Great Father" would not, or could not, 
send goods for the next year. 

It was explained to them that their furs 
were bartered in far off countries for other new 
guns, blankets, twine, capots, duffle, copper ket- 
tles and other wants of the Indians. As we 
wanted the hunters to be well clothed and sup- 
plied with necessaries we imported no such use- 
less trash as the frontier posts were obliged to 
keep to cope with the free traders. 

If an Indian took a four point H. B. blanket, 
even with the rough usage it was subjected to, 
it would keep him and his wife warm for a year. 
The next season, a new one being bought, the 



LONG LAKE INDIANS. 259 

old one did service for another winter as lining 
for mittens, strips for socks, and leggings for 
the younger branches. 

Steel traps being dear twenty-five years ago, 
and the long canoe transport being costly so far 
into the interior, we did not import them very 
largely. 

Bears, martens, minks and even beaver and 
otter were killed in deadfalls; and with differ- 
ent sizes of twine, the Indians snared rabbits, 
lynx, and, in the spring, even the bear. 

The Indians principal, and I may say, only 
tools for hunting and for his support were his 
axe, ice chisel, twine and his gun. I mention 
the gun last because the hunter only used it for 
caribou and moose, ducks and geese. Ammuni- 
tion was too costly to use it for anything that 
could be trapped or snared. 

A life chief was elected by the Indians them- 
selves, and he was supported in his management 
of the tribe by the officer in charge of the post, 
The chief had precedence in being outfitted, his 
canoe headed the fleet of canoes on arriving at 
the post in the spring, and was the one to lead 
off in the autumn. His was the only pack of 
furs carried up from the beach, by our men, to 
the store, and he set the example to his young 
men by being the first to pay his last year's ad- 
vances. To him we gave, as a present, a new 



260 CANADIAN WILDS. 

suit of black cloth clothes, boots, hat, etc., and 
to his wife a bright tartan wool . dress piece, and 
a tartan shawl of contrasting pattern. 

Our currency, or medium of trade, was 
called "Made Beaver/' equivalent in most arti- 
cles to a dollar. The value of each skin was 
computed in "Made Beaver." For every hun- 
dred of "Made Beaver" of skins that the Indian 
brought in we allowed him as a gratuity 
"Called Bum," ten "Made Beaver," he was at 
liberty, after paying his debt, to trade whatever 
he fancied out of the shop to the extent of his 
"Rum." But unless he paid his debt in full the 
"Rum" he was entitled to Avent towards his ac- 
count. This, however, seldom happened, be- 
cause one that did not pay his debt in full was 
looked down upon by his friends, and his sup- 
plies for the next year were reduced in propor- 
tion to his deficiency. 

What a change has taken place in the past 
quarter of a century. I hear from the person 
now in charge of that post (it is kept up prin- 
cipally now to protect our further interior post) 
that all those Indians are dead and gone. Their 
descendants number scarcely one-third of the 
original band. They are thieves, drunkards 
and liars as a rule ; the white man's diseases and 
fire-water have left their trail. White trappers 
have penetrated their country in all directions 



LONG LAKE INDIANS. 261 

from the line of railway and exterminated most 
of the fur-bearing animals. Instead of, as their 
forefathers, getting a good supply of all neces- 
sary articles to assure them of comfort for a 
year, these, their sons and grandsons, can get 
no one to risk advancing them. They live prin- 
cipally, now, on fish and when they do succeed 
in killing a skin, the most likely thing to hap- 
pen is, they will travel many miles to barter it 
for whiskey. 

This is one of the results of railways and 
civilization. I can say with the late lamented 
Custer "The good Indians are dead." 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

DEN BEARS. 

A phase of hunting that I do not remember 
ever seeing described in the H-T-T is of track- 
ing bears to their- den and killing them there. 
The two seasons that this mode of hunting is 
resorted to by the Indians is after the first fall 
of snow and again in February, March or April, 
according to the different locality of the coun- 
try, when the snow is soft and the days are mild 
and spring-like. Some very knowing trailers 
will follow up signs even before there is snow on 
the ground. They Avatch out for broken 
branches, shredded birch bark or other stuff 
which the bear has torn clown to make his bed. 

At times, however, the bear will change his 
mind, even after considerable work has been 
done, and move off to some other ridge of hills 
and there begin over again in what he has de- 
cided a more favorable situation. It is a much 
more dangerous job to tackle a newly denned 
bear than in the spring when they are stupid 
from their long spell of hibernation. Rarely 
does a lone hunter undertake to kill a bear in 

262 



DEN BEARS. 263 

his den. It requires two persons for safety and 
convenience of work. 

In hunting out a bear's den a knowledge of 
what is a likely locality shortens the work very 
much. There are dens found in freak and un- 
looked for places, but as a general rule there 
are certain conditions that go towards their se- 
lection and one who knows these, narrows down 
his area of hunting very considerably. 

The dens are, as a rule, on a high elevation 
with a southern aspect. This selection is made, 
no doubt, with the knowledge given by instinct 
that it keeps clear longer in the autumn and 
opens earlier with the melting snows of spring. 
In my long experience I have found bears three 
times in very unlikely places. One time, when 
on a long trail with dispatches, two Indians and 
myself jumped, one after the other, from the 
trunk of a large fallen pine, with our snow 
shoes, fair and square onto a very large bear 
who had in the fall made his bed at the lea side 
of this shelter and allowed the winter snows to 
fall and bury him. 

It was only three weeks later when we were 
returning by the same trail that the leading man 
of the part}-, when getting to this spot and look- 
ing for an easy place to clamber up onto the 
giant trunk noticed a suspiciously frosted little 
breathing hole in the snow, Word was passed 



264 CANADIAN WILDS. , 

back that perhaps there was a bear there. As 
we had no firearms in the party not even a pis- 
tol, the first thing to do was to cut good stout 
hardwood poles about five feet long. 

A large place was well tramped down with 
our snow shoes to insure good solid footing and 
when all was ready, with our packs and extra 
things out of the way, one of the party was de- 
tailed to get up on the tree trunk and with a 
strong birch lever insert it near where we lo- 
cated the bear to be and pry him out, the other 
two to belabor him with their poles. The man 
on the log had such a strong leverage that his 
first effort broke the bear clear out of the snow 
and before he had time to rouse from his stupor 
he was dead. 

The Indians, who were middle-aged men, 
thought it a great joke that we should all have 
tramped on this bear and three weeks later 
found and killed him. The skin, of course, was 
at its primest state, so we packed it turn and 
turn about, to the fort, where each received his 
share of its value. 

Another time I camped almost on the very 
shore of a small lake with a youth for my com- 
panion. We were to start a yard of moose in 
the early morning on a mountain on the oppo- 
site shore. In the morning while I was cooking 
breakfast, the youth went a few yards away to 



DEN BEARS. 265 

cut a pole to hang our extra provisions 'on that 
we were leaving at the camp. 

He had hardly left the fireplace when I 
heard him call me. There I found him gazing 
intently at a telltale frosted hole in the snow. 
We both came to the same conclusion that it 
was the breathing hole of some animal and that 
animal most likely a bear. We decided not to 
disturb him until our moose hunt was over, so 
quietly withdrew from the vicinity. I may say 
to close this incident that two days later, after 
killing three moose, we dug out the bear suffi- 
ciently to locate his shoulder and shot him in 
his den. 

Another unlooked for place was when land- 
ing at a portage very late in the fall, was to find 
a half-sized bear had made his bed simply at the 
foot of a stump. There was no snow yet on the 
ground and he woke sufficiently to gaze on us 
with a stupid stare. The next minute he had 
his quietus. 

I always seem to wander away from my sub- 
ject. Whether it adds or detracts from the in- 
terest of the article I know not, but I assure 
the reader it is unintentional, but these long, 
past incidents and adventures will crop up in 
my memory and before I think to pull myself up 
they are committed to paper. Well, once again ! 

The most likely places to find a bear denned 



266 CANADIAN WILDS. 

up are under a ledge of rocks, under the roots 
of a partly fallen tree, under an over-hanging 
sand bank, or in a rocky crevice in the moun- 
tain side. The hunters, when they have tracked 
him to or found his den begin by reading all the 
visible signs and lay their plans accordingly. 
If the bed is some little distance back from the 
door or opening, they begin by staking up the 
doorway so nearly closed that the bear will have 
considerable delay in getting out. 

If to stake it is impracticable on account of 
the formation, they gather rocks or sections of 
logs and stuff up most of the opening. Some 
venturesome hunters will stand a leg at each 
side of the opening with their axe poised ready 
to brain him while he is endeavoring to make 
his exit, the man's companion prodding him 
out from the rear. Other hunters (the writer 
amongst them) prefer to remain with his rifle 
ready for business at a few yards from the door- 
way. This is safer and more reasonable. 

Most bears come out into, daylight in a more 
or less dazed state, but I have known some with 
the very first introduction of the pole into the 
rear premises to come out with a rush, carrying 
obstructions and everything before them. At 
such times unless a man is pretty nervy he is 
apt to get "Bear Fever" and he should not be 
blamed, for the situation is trying. 



DEN BEARS. 267 

When the bear has taken up his quarters 
far back in a crevice of the rocks where a pole 
from the surface can find no opening to be intro- 
duced, then the plan of smoking him out has to 
be resorted to. It is done in this way. The 
stuff to be used, some birch bark to ignite it on 
top of which is placed rotten wood or broken up 
punk if procurable, is rammed back a distance 
into the hole. At the end of the withdrawn pole 
a lighted twist of bark is pushed back and the 
doorway quickly blocked as nearly tight as pos- 
sible. 

The hunter retires at once to a safe distance 
with his gun ready for action and aAvaits events. 
He does not, as a rule, have to wait long, for 
when that smoke becomes unbearable, Mr. Bear 
comes out in a hurry and a pretty mad bear at 
that. It is not advisable to introduce too much 
inflammable substance, for it is apt to spoil the 
fur when the bear comes thru the fiery ordeal. 
Rotten popple is next to punk to make a pung- 
ent and unbearable smoke. When such pene- 
trates the bear's nostrils he is bound to wake up 
and his one desire is to get fresh air imme- 
diately. 

The tracking of a bear even in pretty deep 
snow takes time, for unless he knows some one 
is after him he circles and zigzags about, which 
trail requires attention to under run success- 



268 CANADIAN WILDS. 

fully. However, once he becomes possessed 
with the knowledge that he is being pursued, he 
makes a pretty straight line away from danger. 
At such a time a small cur dog is invaluable, for 
while he will not attack the bear, by his yelping 
and barking he delays his progress and at each 
pause of the bear the hunter is gaining ground. 

To kill a bear that is already denned the dog 
is better left at home, for he will be of no use 
and you run the risk (if he is plucky) of his 
being killed in the den. For all kinds of hunt- 
ing I have found the small dog much preferable 
to the one of large size. A small dog can 
readily be put in one's game bag and carried up 
near the game one is to start. He is lighter 
and takes up less room in a canoe, the bones and 
scraps of the camp are sufficient for his sup- 
port, he will run in and nip at the heels of a 
moose or deer and get out of the way and repeat 
his barking, while a big dog would be getting 
into trouble and endangering his life. 

I have often carried, my hunting dog in my 
game bag up a mountain and only slipped him 
when the moose had jumped his bed. The dog 
being fresh he very soon had the moose at a 
standstill. In hunting bear the small dog has 
the discretion to keep out of his reach and be 
contented "with barking and running him 
around. Whereas the bigger dogs are fearless 



DEN BEARS. 269 

and run in on the quarry generally with fatal 
results to themselves, for there is no modern 
pugilist quicker with his fists than a bear with 
his paw, and let the bear get but one good whack 
at a dog and that dog is no better thereafter 
than a dead dog. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

THE MISHAPS OF RALSON. 

Among the many young apprentice officers 
who have been under my orders in the Hudson's 
Bay Company, none was so conspicuously un- 
fortunate as Ealson. His bungling into trou- 
ble became so frequent that it got to be a by- 
word amongst the other clerks and employes 
and at last they came to me and said, "Mr. Hun- 
ter, you ought really to forbid Ralson's going 
outside the stockades unless some one is along 
to take care of him." 

For the short while he was in our service 
(three years) he had, as far as I know, the rec- 
ord for varied mishaps. These were of so fre- 
quent occurrence that at the end of his contract 
he was allowed to leave and, by my advice, he 
returned to his people in England. Good luck 
appeared to go hand in hand with his mis- 
adventures, for somehow he came out alive, still, 
to sa}^ the least, the uncertainty every time he 
left the post as to whether he would return, kept 
one's nerves forever on the ragged edge and not- 
withstanding, he quickly became an adept at 

270 



THE MISHAPS OF RALSON. 271 

most work connected with the service. I was 
glad to see him leave the service because, being 
under my orders and not yet to man's estate, I 
considered myself in a great measure responsi- 
ble for his safety. 

I call to memory his having almost cut off 
the index finger of his left hand, putting the 
axe right thru the knuckle joint. This bled 
profusely and he was on the sick list for a long 
while. I think the next accident very shortly 
after his hand healed, was to put the corner of 
his axe into the cap of his knee. This was more 
serious than the other and took weeks to get 
well. On the whole he was very fortunate not 
to have a stiff leg for the remainder of his life. 

Another time he undertook to look for a man 
who was over-due at the post and was expected 
to come by a trail near the lake shore. This 
was a case of the biter being bitten, for the man 
turned up all right and had to join a party to 
hunt Ealson. As he told us afterwards he 
thought to improve on the trail by cutting 
curves. Dusk coining on he became hopelessly 
lost himself, neither being able to find the trail 
nor his way out of the forest. The search party 
only found him the following afternoon, tat- 
tered, hungry and generally woe-begone. A 
picture of him taken as he entered the square 
that day would have been interesting. 



2i2 CANADIAN WILDS. 

The chances are that he might never have 
been found and thus have perished, had a quiet- 
ing effect on him for some days but the old rest- 
lessness got hold of him again, and he had to be 
away hunting up fresh trouble. This time he 
had a companion and they went in a canoe to 
hunt ducks. His companion (a half-breed) de- 
barked on the river bank to crawl up to some 
birds and placed an injunction on Ralson to re- 
main quietly seated in the canoe. When the 
half-breed returned to the river bank it was to 
find the canoe upset and Ealson sitting on the 
shore dripping wet. On comparing notes it 
was found a rifle I had lent him was at that pre- 
cise moment at the bottom of the river in about 
ten feet of water. 

It would never do to return to the post and 
report this mishap and. the loss of the gun, so 
Ralson undressed and began to dive for its re- 
covery. Robert, the man, told me, when de- 
scribing the adventure, that he never laughed 
so much in his life as when sitting on the bank 
and watching Ralson making desperate and re- 
peated efforts to recover the weapon. He was 
finally successful and exacted a cast iron prom- 
ise from Robert not to inform the people at the 
post. A promise which Robert promptly broke. 

An accident, however, which almost cost him 
his life, altho after he was safe at the post, 



THE MISHAPS OF RALSON. 273 

caused us considerable merriment, came about 
in this way, and I expect he will remember it 
as long as he lives, if yet alive. We were send- 
ing an express canoe from the post to the near- 
est point on the frontier to mail dispatches to 
headquarters. The distance is about fifty miles 
over lakes, rivers and portages. The usual time 
for such a trip was three days for the round 
trip. Kalson begged to accompany the men, 
partly for an outing and partly to see the fron- 
tier village of Luqueville. 

Their route lay thru a chain of small lakes 
on which I had a couple of bear traps set. To 
save me a trip to visit these traps I told Robert, 
the guide, to kill any bear he found caught and 
reset the traps, cache the meat and skin and 
bring it with them on their return journey. 
These instructions were simple enough and I 
was not anxious about Ralson. Ralson, how- 
ever, changed all these plans for, when they 
reached the first trap, in which they found a 
bear caught and Robert had killed it, Ral- 
son proposed he should stay behind, skin 
and cut up the meat and visit the second trap 
which was a short distance off the canoe route, 
and then he was to come home on foot by skirt- 
ing the lakes along a sometimes used trail, tak- 
ing the skin with him. 

*18 



274 CANADIAN WILDS. 

Robert thought this plan a good one as it 
would expedite matters for he and his compan- 
ion to make a quick trip. When, however, he 
got back to the place after an absence of about 
forty hours and found the skin and meat lying 
where he had left them and no sign of Ralson, 
he was quick to understand that something had 
happened. What that something was, however, 
he was at a loss to settle in his mind. All at 
once, while standing there considering, the 
thought struck him that possibly Ealson was 
caught in the other trap. Such things had hap- 
pened to men accustomed to trapping and how 
much more likely to a careless fellow like the 
missing man. 

Giving expression to his thought Robert and 
his companion both hurried off towards the 
other trap, which was about a mile up the creek. 
When they came to a soft place on the trail and 
saw only the footprints of a man going and none 
returning, Robert was convinced the poor fel- 
low was in the trap, whether alive or dead they 
refrained from contemplating. What a sight 
met their gaze when coming in sight of the bear 
pen! There was poor Ralson lying prone on 
his back motionless and to all appearances 
dead, the great, heavy mass of metal fast to his 
leg and his pocket knife with broken blade lying 
near at hand, evidently thrown there as useless. 



THE MISHAPS OF RALSON. 275 

They saw how he had hacked at the strong birch 
drag to which the chain was fastened until his 
knife became useless and then given up in de- 
spair. 

Ralson, upon examination, was found to be 
yet alive, but unconscious and covered with blue 
flies, his hands and face were swollen from the 
mosquito poison and covered with dirt he had 
scratched while trying to dig for water. He 
looked a frightful and pitiful object. Luckily 
the men who had found him were quick to think 
and in a remarkably short space of time they 
had the leg freed from its iron clasp. One ran 
for a pannikin of cold water while the other 
twisted a piece of birch bark into the shape of 
a horn, with the small end open just enough to 
allow the water to trickle thru gently into his 
throat. 

Next they bathed and washed his face and 
hands and shortly had the satisfaction of seeing 
him open his eyes. Eobert now held up his 
head and placed the remaining water in the 
pannikin to his lips. This he managed to drink 
and blessed, blessed water, it revived him com- 
pletely. The other man was then sent back to 
the canoe for the tea kettle and provisions, 
Robert starting a fire during his absence. Tea 
and partridge broth made and administered in 
small quantities at first helped him to regain 



276 GANADIAN WILDS. 

his strength. His youthful vitality soon as- 
serted itself and after he was propped up and 
made comfortable he managed to feed himself 
with some of the shredded meat. 

After partaking of this food and drink the 
boot was cut off, the poor swollen foot bathed 
and bound up and then they carried him on an 
improvised stretcher very carefully and ten- 
derly out to the canoe. Excepting two short 
portages it was all water way to the post at 
which place they arrived just at dusk. Souder, 
our cook, when he saw them helping Ralson out 
of the canoe said, "Mein Gott ! Vich end of Ral- 
son is sick dis time? Can't you tole me, eh?" 
and it was pretty hard to tell from his limp ap- 
pearance. 

After he had recovered sufficiently to be 
questioned as to how he got into the trap he 
said he had reached into the back of the house 
to affix the bait and forgot the trap and stepped 
into it. The meat that he had cut up was, of 
course, spoiled, but the skin after being washed 
and scraped, proved to have sustained no 
damage. 

Ralson had no further mishaps in this coun- 
try for when his foot was healed he took his dis- 
charge and returned to a well-off mother in 
London who could afford to have a keeper to 
care for him if so inclined. This happened 



THE MISHAPS OF RALSON. 277 

years ago and as I never heard from him he may 
have joined the English Yeomanry and gone to 
South Africa and been killed on the firing line. 
If so, his mishaps are finished and so is my 
story. 



MAR 15 I909 BR i EF LIST 0F BOOKS. 

Published by 

A. R. MA.RDIIVQ PUBUSHING CO, 

COLUMBUS, OHIO. 



Sent postpaid on receipt of price. Descriptive circulars 
mailed free to any address. 



STEEL TRAPS Just the book that trappers have long needed — gives 
the history of steel traps, how made, sizes for the various animals 
with detailed instructions on where and how to set. Scores of old 
hunters and trappers have written their methods which are pub- 
lished. Makes no difference what fur-bearing animal you wish to 
trap, the best methods for its capture, size trap, etc., is described 
Also chapters on how to skin, stretch and handle Raw Furs. This 
book contains about 300 pages and some 100 illustrations. Size of 
pages 5x7 inches. Cloth Bound, Price 60 cents. ' Paper 25 cents. 

FOX TRAPPING. This book contains 185 pages and 43 illustrations. 
Describes Land, Water and Snow Sets ; also how to make and set 
snares. Printed on good quality paper with clear illustrations. 
Size of pages 5x7 inches. Cloth Bound, Price 60 cents. 

MINK TRAPPING. Various methods are used in taking this valuable 
furbearer in different parts of North America. This book explains 
all of them. Contains 183 pages and 34 illustrations. Printed on 
good paper with fine illustrations. Size of pages 5x7 inches 
Cloth Bound, Price 60 cents. 

DEADFALLS AND SNARES Describes the various home-made traps — 
pole, log, stone — deadfalls and snares, also how to make many 
kinds of triggers such as 2 piece, figure 4, etc. Various old and ex- 
perienced trappers have written their methods of constructing 
these. Also chapters on stretching, skinning, etc. Printed on 
good paper with about 60 drawings and illustrations and over 230 
, pages. The most complete book on how to make "home-made" 
traps ever published. Size of pages 5x7 inches. Cloth Bound 
Price 60 eents. 

CANADIAN WILDS. This book is from the pen of a Hudson's Bay Officer 
(Martin Hunter) who has had 40 years experience with the Hudson 
Bay Co. — from 1863 to 1903. During that time he was stationed at 
different Trading- Posts in Canada. This book contains chapters 
on The Hudson's Bay Company ; Forts and Posts ; Northern Indians ; 
The Free Trader ; Outfitting Indians ; Dark Furs ; Indian Modes of 
Hunting, Trapping. Etc, Etc. Printed on good quality paper and 
contains about 275 pages — not illustrated. Size of pages 5x7 
Cloth Bound, Price 60 cents. 

HUNTER=TRADER=TRAPPER. Published monthly and contains from 
128 to 200 pages each issue. As its name indicates is a magazine of 
information for hunters, trappers, raw fur dealers, etc., containing 
up-to-date methods and information. Many articles also published 
on growing Ginseng, Golden Seal and Raising Fur Bearing Animals. 
From 30 to 60 illustrations used each month, Single copy 10 cents 
vearly subscription $1.00. 



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